


Some Day (We'll Be Together)

by anon08



Category: The 100
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, One Day AU, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:02:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6974569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anon08/pseuds/anon08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and Lexa sleep together the night of their college graduation and spend the next 20 years weaving in and out of each other's lives on that same day every year.</p><p>A "One Day" AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Friday May 3, 1996 -** **21 Years Old**

“I guess what I really want to do is move people. You know, with my art," Clarke said. “Yes I can set bones and stitch wounds, but I’m more interested in healing peoples’ souls. Not their bodies.”

“I see.”

“You think that’s dumb don’t you? I realize how it sounds.”

“Not dumb,” Lexa replied carefully. “But why are you limiting yourself to souls and bodies. What about minds? That’s how real change happens. Through the power of the human brain.”

“So you’ll change the world through brainpower? Are you going to tell people what to think?”

“Of course not! But you can certainly change _the way_ that they think.”

“Sure, in the long run, maybe you can do that. But there’s always the chance that someone just won’t change. But art,” Clarke sighed, “art changes people in an instant. It’s visceral, inescapable. Art evokes emotion, and emotion feeds the soul. Where would humanity be without that capacity to feel so much in so little time? I think, as much as we’d like to think we act with our heads, our hearts always win out.”

Lexa shifted then, from where she had been lying on her back with her head faced up towards the ceiling, and turned onto her side, propping her head up with one hand. She was silent for a few long moments, her eyes searching the side of Clarke’s face, and Clarke felt her cheeks growing hot under the weight of the other girl’s gaze.

“I’m sorry. I was ranting,” Clarke said. She grabbed the edge of the thin comforter where it lay covering her bare chest and pulled it over her head. She had waited so long to get into bed with Lexa and now she was ruining it with her quasi-philosophical rambling.

Lexa reached out and gently tugged the covers off of Clarke’s head. She bit her lip to hide the smile that threatened to come out when she saw the way Clarke’s hair had become frizzy from the static of the sheets. She reached across the bed to tuck a particularly rebellious strand of hair behind Clarke’s ear, the pad of her thumb grazing over the other girl’s cheekbone. Clarke blushed, light pink rising in a flash to her cheeks, and Lexa couldn’t help it then. She leaned over and kissed Clarke, slowly, lingering.

“I think we should call a truce on this one.” Lexa said, as she started to press light kisses to the underside of Clarke’s jaw, then to the sharp edge of the top of her collarbone. “Let’s change the subject.”

Clarke nodded, afraid to say anything lest her voice waver due to the effect Lexa’s kisses were having on her. She was almost grateful when Lexa stopped to lean back and think. Almost.

“Hmmm…” Lexa hummed, resuming her earlier propped up position. Clarke turned onto her side too, so that they were facing each other now, their legs just inches apart. “Ok. Let’s talk about the future.”

Clarke laughed and swatted at Lexa’s shoulder. “Isn’t that what we were just talking about? I thought you were changing the subject.”

Lexa caught Clarke’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it and Clarke’s laugh was abruptly cut off. “Not the future of humankind. The future of us.” Clarke blushed again, but this time she saw a matching blush on Lexa’s cheeks, the barest hint of red blooming high on her cheekbones. Lexa coughed lightly. “Sorry, the future of you. And me. Separately. Think of yourself at forty. Where will you be? What will you be doing?”

Lexa seemed to notice that she still held Clarke’s hand in hers, and she regarded it for a moment before flipping it over and pressing another kiss to the inside of Clarke’s palm. She looked up through her eyelashes as she did so, waiting for Clarke’s answer. Clarke quickly withdrew her hand before Lexa could kiss it again.

“Stop. I can’t think when you do that.”

Lexa smirked, her lips curling up wickedly.

“And stop that too.”

Lexa immediately smoothed her face into a blank expression. “Stop what, Clarke?”

Clarke closed her eyes and flipped onto her back again, partly so Lexa couldn’t fully see the ridiculous grin on her face that happened whenever Lexa said her name like that (so carefully, like it was something special), and partly so she could give the question some serious thought without Lexa as a distraction.

She tried for a few minutes. She really did. But it was a lot of pressure to answer a question that significant, especially when she could once again feel the weight of Lexa’s eyes boring into her from the side. She opened one eye and peeked at Lexa.

“Can you go first?”

Lexa laughed and pushed herself up so she was sitting against the headboard. The sheets slipped down over her naked torso, resting so that they were just barely covering her breasts, and she didn’t bother to reach down and adjust them. Clarke found herself wishing they would fall further. Lexa ran a hand through her hair.

“Alright. Give me a minute.”

Clarke followed the path of Lexa’s long fingers as they slid through chestnut hair and nodded. Of course she’d give her a minute. She’d give her anything. Because she was Lexa.

Lexa Woods. Here in her bed. It was unbelievable really. Clarke looked over at the other girl, still deep in thought, and let her eyes linger. She wanted to take in all of this. To remember it forever. A flickering light on the street corner cast a dull glow through the open glass window of Clarke’s room. The glow fell on Lexa’s cheeks, highlighting how high they were, how rounded on top and sharp underneath. She had long brown hair that fell to her shoulders in tousled waves that were somehow both wild and contained, effortless but styled. Delicately arched brows rested smoothly over wide, long lashed green eyes. The kind of green that reminded Clarke of her mother’s mint plants. The ones she had picked to make mint lemonade for Clarke, as a treat on a hot summer’s day. Sometimes, looking into Lexa’s eyes, Clarke felt as though she could taste that lemonade on her tongue, her mouth filling with a unique hint of earthy sweetness and sharp acidity that hit her like a punch in the gut.

Lexa’s strong, straight nose led to full, pink lips that were usually pressed into a careful, schooled expression but could sometimes be coaxed into a sly smile or, best of all, a musical laugh. And her body. God, her body. Clarke didn’t know what Lexa did to maintain it, if anything, but somehow the other girl was blessed with a long, lithe frame and taut muscles that Clarke was apt to get distracted by if Lexa was anywhere near her. She was regal, otherworldly. She was the kind of beautiful that commanded attention. People stopped to look at her on the street, they did double takes when they walked by her, eyes and mouths wide, murmuring _who’s that girl_ under their breath.

They had met at a frat party their sophomore year. Not the most exciting of circumstances, but Clarke thought that she would remember that night for the rest of her life. Clarke had been standing with her friends when the crowd had parted in just the right way so that she could see Lexa across the room, surrounded by a group of people that seemed to be riveted on her every word. Their gazes met, drawn together even over that distance, and Clarke distinctly remembered choking on her drink upon seeing the hooded intensity in those cool green eyes. Octavia patted her on the back and Raven teased her for not being able to handle her alcohol and by the time Clarke looked back up, Lexa’s eyes were directed once more on the people in front of her.

Much later that night, as Clarke was well on her way to being much too drunk to function, Lexa approached their group alongside a devastatingly attractive guy named Lincoln, who turned out to be Octavia’s newest boy toy, and also Lexa’s best friend. Clarke had waved like a giant dork and blurted out _Holy shit you’re gorgeous_ in Lexa’s general direction and Raven almost fell over from laughing so hard but Lexa’s blank, emotionless face had morphed into a slow, secret smile that was just for her and Clarke felt a heat unfurl low in her stomach.

Things moved slowly after that. Lexa could have anyone she wanted, and, judging by the gossip Clarke heard, she did. Girls left her apartment at any hour of the day, wearing last night’s rumpled clothes and smudged make-up like a badge of honor. But each girl was never seen more than one time. _Lincoln says she’s not the type to date. School always comes first. She’s following in her father’s footsteps. Politics, you know_. Octavia had whispered the words to her after she caught Clarke staring longingly at the back of Lexa’s head in their Astronomy lecture one too many times. Clarke sort of gave up on it after that, but then she and Lexa were paired up for an end of semester project, and the crush was renewed. Clarke got to spend much more time with Lexa, and she quickly found out that Lexa was smart. No, not just smart, but intelligent in a way that was beyond anything Clarke had seen. Clarke imagined Lexa’s mind as a sharp sword that she constantly worked at, kept bone rendingly sharp. Lexa’s mind was a weapon, and a deadly one. She made Clarke feel small and unsure as she easily navigated their confusing star charts and dense textbook chapters.

But Clarke also found out that, while Lexa maintained an impenetrable, stoic exterior most of the time, she was also kind. Once, after a particularly long day of working on the project, Clarke fell asleep at her desk while she and Lexa were in the midst of outlining their presentation. She woke up tucked into her bed, with a note on her nightstand saying that dinner was in the fridge and that they could resume work on the project that weekend. Clarke imagined Lexa carrying her to bed and her heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst.

Then one still, fall night, towards the very end of that sophomore semester, they did their final bit of work on the project. Clarke was looking through a telescope on the roof of their university’s planetarium, Lexa standing silently at her side. Clarke peered through the telescope’s sight at all the stars and suns and planets of the solar system laid out before her like some godly tapestry, and thought that earth was a masterpiece and life was a gift. But she couldn’t put that into words. _It’s beautiful_ she had breathed out instead, and Lexa had said, in her light, quiet voice _Yes, it is_ but when Clarke pulled back from the telescope Lexa’s eyes weren’t focused on the night sky but on Clarke’s moon white face, and Clarke suddenly felt that all of earth’s gravity was pushing on her heart because why else would it feel so completely eviscerated.

And so it went. Their groups started to hang out more and more, drawn by the connection of Octavia and Lincoln, who were practically inseparable. Clarke saw Lexa at group meals in the dining hall, she saw her on chilly fall afternoons in the football stadium as they cheered on their school’s team, and she saw her at hazy house parties and sweaty frat parties, standing at the opposite end of the table where she and Bellamy were crushing everyone in beer pong. Sometimes they talked, and Clarke cherished those moments of interaction, of getting to bask in the light of Lexa’s intense gaze and Lexa’s close-mouthed smiles because she had this way of making Clarke feel like she was the only person on earth she wanted to be talking to when they were together. But sometimes they didn’t talk, and that was ok too because Clarke thought that it was enough just to be around her.

And if Clarke felt like she wanted to throw up every time she saw Lexa go home with another girl, or if she wanted to cry every time Lincoln said he saw someone shimmying down the fire escape outside Lexa’s room…well, those times she chose to ignore. Besides, it’s not as if she was completely chaste either. Some nights Raven would groan, _Clarke, you’re hot. Not like, my level hot, or Octavia level hot, or, shit, even your mom’s level of hot…But you’re goddamn hot. And you need to use that while you still can._ Those nights she’d go out to the bars or the parties and she’d find the guy or girl there with the most intelligent eyes and the sweetest smile and she’d let herself fall into bed with them.

So the years passed, faster than Clarke could have ever imagined. Octavia led their school’s softball team to two national championships, and her relationship with Lincoln bloomed into a love that was so sappy that Raven took to pretending to hang herself whenever the pair kissed in front of her (which was very, very often). Raven won countless awards for her work in engineering, and shared frequent and not so secret hook ups with Bellamy, which she swore meant nothing to her but which caused Bellamy to look at her with his softest puppy dog eyes, which were usually only reserved for Octavia. And then there was Clarke. Clarke aced all of her biology finals and briefly dated a guy from her art class and applied to medical schools and wondered when she would ever be as happy as all her friends seemed to be.

In a flash, they were at the end of senior year, and the air around them was suddenly thick with expectation and doubt and excitement for the future. On the night after their graduation ceremony, in which Raven had been honored as valedictorian, they kissed and hugged their parents and relatives goodbye for the evening and then met at Raven and Octavia’s place for their first get together as college graduates. Clarke lounged on the scarred wood floor of the apartment and looked around at her small group of friends--Raven, Octavia, Lincoln, Murphy, Miller, Nyko, Bellamy (already a year graduated but in town for the occasion), and Lexa--and thought that she was so lucky to have found this group of people to share such an important time in her life with. _Anyone up for spin the bottle?_ a tipsy Raven asked, and an equally tipsy Bellamy said _What, are we in high school?_ but he was smiling and everyone else agreed to play. Raven spun first and landed on Bellamy--eliciting a round of cheers from everyone there besides Octavia and Murphy--then Bellamy spun and got Miller, then Miller got Clarke, and then it was Clarke’s turn.

The bottle seemed to spin forever, the brown glass whirling into a blur against the smooth, worn wood of the floor, but finally it came to a rest. Clarke looked up and saw that it was pointing at Lexa. Her mouth immediately felt like it was filled with sawdust, and she took a long, hard pull of the beer she had been nursing for the last half hour. _Get on with it_ Miller called from his place across the circle from her, and Clarke glared at him before crawling forward on her hands and knees and coming to a stop in front of Lexa. _Here I go_ she said, and immediately felt childish and ridiculous, so she leaned forward before Lexa could say anything in reply. The kiss was light, chaste, but when Clarke pulled back Lexa was looking at her with heavy, half lidded eyes and Clarke’s stomach immediately tied itself into a knot and both girls knew then, without having to say it, that they were going to be spending the night together.

They left Raven and Octavia’s apartment in a drunken tangle of limbs. Lexa pushed Clarke against the wall in the dark alleyway next to the building and Clarke grabbed Lexa’s shirt in her fists and kissed her in a way that was the exact opposite of the chaste one from earlier. Someone wolf whistled from an upstairs window in the neighboring complex so Clarke panted an invitation back to her place against Lexa’s lips and Lexa hesitated for just a moment before nodding. The walk back seemed to take an eternity, the air thick and crackling between them, and when they finally reached Clarke’s apartment Clarke closed the door and pulled Lexa to her. _Are you sure_ , Lexa hesitated for the second time that night and Clarke just laughed and grabbed Lexa’s hand and pulled her towards her bedroom because she had never been more sure of anything in her twenty one years on earth.

Later, Lexa kissed her way down Clarke’s body and between her legs and Clarke thought that maybe the view through the planetarium’s telescope hadn’t been that great after all because the smattering of stars she had seen through the glass had nothing on the limitless galaxies she saw painted against her closed eyelids.

And that’s how they wound up here. Post-grads, post-coital, their naked bodies tangled in bed sheets, up and talking inexplicably at the crack of dawn. Clarke kept waiting for someone to pop out and tell her that this was all an elaborate joke but it still hadn’t happened yet.

“Come back to me.”

The words snapped Clarke out of her reverie and her eyes slowly refocused so that she could see Lexa looking at her, a small smile on her lips.

“What were you thinking about?” Lexa asked.

 _Oh, just about how ridiculously gorgeous you are and how stupid it is that you’re here with me right now_ is what Clarke thought, but what she said was, “Nothing really.” She tugged gently, teasingly on Lexa’s tousled hair (the same hair she had firmly pulled on last night to gain better access to Lexa’s neck). “You’re just taking so long with your answer.”

Lexa seemed to buy it because she sighed and leaned her head back against the headboard. “It’s a difficult question, Clarke. I need time to consider.” While Lexa spoke, Clarke watched the words tighten the muscles of her jawline and she swallowed, hard, against the pulse of desire she felt in her belly.

“Ok then, I’ll do it for you,” Clarke said. Anything to distract herself.

Lexa raised an eyebrow at her. “Really? Alright. This should be interesting.” Lexa crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Clarke expectantly.

“Well,” Clarke toyed with the hem of the comforter, thinking. “I know you want to get into politics. So I see you as a successful politician. Or a political…something or other. You’ll be respected. Revered, even. People will follow you willingly.”

“I can’t say I dislike the sound of that,” Lexa said, raising her chin in mock haughtiness. “But that’s an easy one. What about my personal life? Tell me about that, oh wise one.”

Clarke pretended to think very deeply. “You’ll live in a nice house. Nice car. Tasteful but clearly wealthy. And you’ll have a hot wife to match. “ The images sprang to Clarke’s mind, unbidden. “She’ll do everything you ask, and do it perfectly…but she’ll bore you eventually. She won’t be your equal. You’ll feel like something is missing and start to look elsewhere.”

Clarke didn’t know what made her say it, didn’t know that that was something she even thought. But the words were out before she could stop them.

Lexa’s eyes hardened into smooth, impenetrable emeralds and Clarke felt a prickle of fear at the sight.

“Is that what you think of me? That I’d just dispose of someone like that?”

“Lexa, that’s not what I…”

“Not what you meant,” Lexa said, voice deceptively even. “Then what did you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m an idiot.”

But Lexa started to push off of the bed. “Maybe I should go. If you think I’m some kind of womanizing…”

“No, don’t.” Clarke interrupted, hating the hint of desperation that crept into her voice. “Please stay. I don’t think that about you at all.” She reached her hand out and grabbed Lexa’s bicep gently. “Please, Lexa. I’m sorry.”

Lexa looked at Clarke and saw her furrowed brow, saw the light mist in Clarke’s blue eyes that hinted at the sudden downpour that inevitably follow Lexa’s departure. Her sudden burst of anger evaporated just as quickly as it had come.

“Fine,” Lexa said gently, and she knew immediately that she had made the right choice when she saw the smile that brightened Clarke’s face. In one quick movement Lexa rolled onto Clarke, holding herself up with her arms on either side of Clarke’s face. Clarke slid her hands up to stroke Lexa’s bare ribs and scratch lightly down her back and Lexa shivered despite herself. “But now you have to make it up to me,” she said lowly before leaning down and capturing Clarke’s lips with her own.

\------

Afterwards, Clarke made her breakfast. Lexa watched Clarke moving around the kitchen in just her underwear and an oversized white t-shirt. She glanced at the large clock on Clarke’s wall, which told her it was 5:30am, then she looked back at Clarke.

Lexa thought that it was really getting to the part where she should leave.

She never spent the morning, or even the night after a hook-up. And she never went back to their place. It was always at her place, always on her terms. Anything other than that was usually messy in a way that Lexa had zero tolerance for. But Clarke’s golden hair was spilling out of a bun haphazardly and her mouth was curled into a small smile as she hummed under her breath and cracked eggs into a bowl, and Lexa thought that maybe she would break her own rules just for a little while longer. Just for Clarke.

Clarke Griffin. Standing there before Lexa in the kitchen, with her alabaster skin and loose movements, Clarke was pretty. Ok, maybe more than pretty. She was striking in a way that made Lexa’s pulse beat faster just from looking at her. Clarke’s attractiveness was a matter of fact—one which Lexa found both inconvenient and undeniable. Clarke had perpetually sun kissed blonde hair and a pretty pink mouth that was always animated, usually with easy laughter or breezy jokes or impassioned speeches. Lexa liked to watch those lips curl around the end of a pencil as Clarke chewed on it while she was concentrating, which happened a lot when they were working on their Astronomy project. Clarke also had a Marilyn Monroe beauty mark and the curves to match, and Lexa often saw guys admiring her from behind, appreciating the bend of her ass in her jeans or the swing of her hips as she walked.

Lexa liked Clarke’s body, but she was more often distracted by Clarke’s eyes, so different from her own. Clarke’s eyes were the dark blue of the ocean after a storm—calm on the surface, but with a depth that suggested mystery, hidden treasure beneath the waves. In short, Clarke Griffin looked like every man’s ideal woman, and yet she wore her beauty so carelessly, as if she wasn’t even aware of it. Lexa thought that maybe that was a lot of the appeal, that Clarke could not seem to see the effect she had on people, or simply didn’t care.

And yet. Lexa had slept with a lot of woman with blonde hair and blue eyes and curvy bodies. Women who could beat her in a match of wits. Women who were funny, who didn’t realize their own beauty, who didn’t care how they looked, or how they treated others. She’d seen it all before.

So there had to be something else that set Clarke Griffin apart from the others.

Perhaps it was Clarke’s earnestness, her powerful, unwavering sincerity. Clarke wore her heart on her sleeve, and Lexa could tell that deception was a concept that was completely unbeknownst to Clarke. Because when Clarke looked at a person, she seemed to see past the surface, into that person’s very nature. She inspired a certain transparency in others, and gave it back doubly. Clarke was an open book, she was a complicated tangle of simmering surface emotions, which, to Lexa, was both terrifying and awe inspiring. Yes, that was probably it. Everything about Clarke was laid bare.

Lexa had first noticed this that very first night they met. When she had caught sight of a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to see Clarke, standing across the room and swaying slightly, her blue eyes holding Lexa’s gaze. For a split second, Clarke hadn’t backed down, had actually looked at Lexa with a challenge in her eyes, and that wasn’t negated by the fact that Lexa saw her choke on her drink just a moment later. That one glance was enough for Lexa to be intrigued. But then someone had asked her something and she had been forced to turn away. Later, when Lincoln brought her over to be introduced to his new girlfriend, Clarke had sputtered out a compliment and Lexa felt affection bloom in her chest at this strange girl’s unexpected honesty.

They had started to spend more time together, first due to the project and then because of Octavia and Lincoln’s relationship. In those brief stretches when Clarke and Lexa’s lives collided in school, Lexa learned that Clarke was selfless, that she couldn’t walk past a homeless panhandler on the street without going into a nearby store to buy them something to eat, or giving them all the money she had in her wallet at the time. Clarke was also naturally smart, getting good grades while barely seeming to try. She easily balanced biology and organic chemistry classes with a full workload from the art school. But she liked to party, too. She held her alcohol extraordinarily well, to a point, but sometimes she’d have just one shot too much, and then she seemed to hit a wall of drunkenness from which there was no return and Hurricane Clarke (as Raven liked to call her) was unleashed onto the world.

And Clarke was also loved by her friends, to a degree that stunned Lexa, who was always surrounded by people but never really felt close to more than a few. Lexa liked to watch Clarke and her friend’s interact, that ridiculously good-looking threesome of Raven, Octavia and Bellamy. They all complimented each other so well: Raven with her razor sharp sarcasm and Octavia with her stubborn intensity and Bellamy with his hard exterior and bleeding heart. Lexa grew to like them all, to appreciate their presence and the color they brought to her life--but even amongst that special group, Clarke stood out above the others. And they all seemed to know it too. They listened to her and deferred to her because Clarke was the earth and they were all just so many satellites caught in her gravity. So that was another thing about Clarke that intrigued Lexa. Because Lexa commanded attention through a combination of fear and awe. She knew the kind of icy exterior she projected, and she used it as equal parts weapon and shield. But Clarke commanded attention in her own way. She didn’t seek it out, or put up any fronts. No, Clarke commanded attention because people genuinely loved her.

And that made Lexa wary. She could not, would not, be one of those people who was hopelessly enamored with Clarke.

But Lexa could tell that Clarke was into her, even if she had no idea why. She didn’t miss the way that Clarke’s eyes drifted down to her lips when she talked about the constellations on dreary afternoons spent working on Clarke’s couch. She saw the way Clarke smiled at her from across the sea of people in the bleachers between them on days that their group went to the football games. And there was that one night, at the end of their junior year, when Hurricane Clarke had appeared out of nowhere and Lexa had walked her back to her apartment, struggling to move forward with Clarke’s dead weight draped against her shoulder. Lexa had opened Clarke’s door and led her to the bedroom and put her into a faded, soft shirt to sleep in and that’s when Clarke had leaned forward and whispered, hot against her ear, _you are the most gorgeous person I have ever seen,_ before promptly passing out on the bed. Lexa felt a painful squeeze of affection in her chest, one she had been feeling all too often lately with Clarke, and she realized her orbit around Clarke was getting too close after all. She risked getting pulled in, and she knew she shouldn’t. She couldn’t. Because returning Clarke’s feelings was not an option, and it was not an option because Lexa was too focused on her work and her future career and there was no room in that narrative for a gorgeous, golden haired girl with a big heart and an easy smile. Lexa would hurt her, if she allowed anything to happen, and the idea of hurting Clarke Griffin was absolutely unacceptable.

So she had left Clarke that night with a glass of water and an aspirin on her nightstand, and for the remainder of junior year and the entirety of senior year she had made a point to limit their interactions. She lost herself in other girls, ones that didn’t bring that painful ache to her chest, ones she knew she’d never have to see again. (Maybe there was some truth to Clarke’s earlier statement about discarding people but that was not something Lexa wanted to engage with. It scared her).

But, in the end, Lexa was weak. When Clarke had kissed her during that game of spin the bottle, Lexa had felt a stirring that she couldn’t ignore. She liked Clarke and she respected her, and frankly she wanted her, so she thought she could let something happen just that one time.

So now, here she sat. In Clarke’s apartment. Watching Clarke cook for her. After they had had sex. Twice.

Lexa had no idea what she was doing. She was breaking all the rules.

“Pancakes are ready.” Clarke said, setting a messily stacked plate on the island counter in front of Lexa and sliding a fork and a bottle of syrup over to her. Lexa eyed the pancakes hungrily but controlled herself, drizzling a little syrup before cutting a dainty piece and savoring the taste in her mouth. Not bad. Clarke leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter across from Lexa and cupping her head in her hands.

“You’re not eating?” Lexa asked, noticing that Clarke had only made one plate of food.

“I’m not hungry. I rarely eat breakfast.”

Lexa nodded and cut another piece of pancake, this one a little less dainty, and brought it to her mouth. “You’re missing out,” she said.

Clarke shrugged noncommittally and continued to watch Lexa as she took a few more bites. The room was silent. All Lexa could hear was the sound of her own chewing and the ticking of the clock.

“Ok,” Lexa said, setting her fork and knife down. “This is weird. You can’t just watch me eat.”

“I can’t?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What do you suggest I do instead?”

Lexa tried to think of something that would distract Clarke. “Well, you never answered the question from earlier.”

“The forty year old thing?” Lexa nodded.  “I did it for you. I can’t do it for myself! It’s too hard.”

Lexa put on the most pathetic face she could muster and Clarke laughed at how much she utterly failed at it. Something that beautiful could not be made to look pathetic, no matter how hard it tried.

“Try again?” Lexa asked, and Clarke rolled her eyes and sighed softly.

“Fine.” Clarke said. She stood up and tapped her fingers lightly on the counter. “I guess I see myself traveling a lot. Seeing the world. Getting inspired. Then I’ll settle down. Have a little gallery with paintings of all the places I’ve been.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“It does, doesn’t it.” Clarke smiled, pleased with herself.

“But what about your medical training?”

The smile slid off of Clarke’s face. “What about it?”

“You didn’t mention that at all? Aren’t you going to become a doctor?”

“I don’t know.” Clarke pushed back from the counter and crossed her arms. “I just don’t know if that’s the right path for me.”

“Clarke. Raven and Octavia both told me you received A’s in all of your biology classes. And isn’t your mother a surgeon? It would be so easy to follow in her footsteps.”

Lexa wasn’t sure why it was so surprising to her to hear that Clarke did not see a future for herself in the medical profession. She knew Clarke loved art, had seen a few glimpses of her work with her own eyes and found it breathtakingly beautiful, but art would not make a comfortable living.

Clarke was silent.

Lexa pressed onward. “Didn’t you apply to medical schools?”

Clarke nodded.

“And I’m sure you will get into all of them. You can’t just throw all of that away, Clarke. You could be saving people.”

Clarke’s next words sounded tight, like she was saying them through gritted teeth. “We already went over this. There is more than one way of saving people.” She leveled her gaze at Lexa. “And there has to be more to life than just surviving to make money and then die.”

Lexa opened her mouth, a retort on the tip of her tongue, about how life wasn’t just fun and games but something that had to be worked at, but a loud ringing interrupted her before she could say anything.

“That’s my phone. I’ve got to get it,” Clarke muttered, shuffling out of the room. The tension in the air relented a little more with each step she took away, and by the time Clarke reached the other room, it was mostly gone. Lexa could hear Clarke murmuring low to someone, but couldn’t hear anything that was being said.

Lexa stabbed her fork into what remained of her pancakes and left it there.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand where Clarke was coming from. She absolutely understood. In high school she had dreamed of running away, of getting lost in some exotic locale and never looking back. She had rebelled against her family, resenting them for constantly reminding her that she had to be on her best behavior because her _stepfather_ was in politics and thus was constantly under public scrutiny. Lexa hadn’t listened. She had skipped class, smoked cigarettes, planned her escape. But then her mother had died, suddenly, and without warning. _An undiagnosed heart condition_ were the whispers she heard from the other students at school and from the newscasters on television. That rebellious Lexa had put unnecessary stress into her mother’s heart, the one that would suddenly shudder and fail.

So Lexa decided to make it up to her. From that point on she had turned her course around. She studied, harder than she ever had in her life. She joined clubs, volunteered, became every bit the model student that her mother had wanted her to be. She got into a good college, and declared a political science major, just like her stepfather had. Just like her mother had hoped. She knew that chasing passion was something for young, foolish people. Not for practical adults who wanted to build a viable future and change lives in the process. (And definitely not for people who had watched their mother collapse on the shiny hardwood floor of their childhood home after a particularly bad screaming battle about missed classes).

In the other room, Clarke sat on the edge of her bed, suddenly feeling the weight of how tired she was. She rubbed at her eyes and yawned sleepily as she listened to the voice on the other end of the line. Her mother’s voice.

“Are we going to see you later? You slipped away rather quickly last night...”

“Mom, it’s 6 in the morning.”

“Oh, it is. Still on west coast time I guess. But we’re just so excited to be here. To see you.”

Clarke felt an all too familiar prickle of guilt at the reminder that last night at graduation was the first time she had seen her parents in a little over a year. She had chosen to go to school across the country, in Princeton, New Jersey. A place so completely different than her sunny California childhood. And for the past year or so something had always come up on her holiday breaks at school. A trip to visit Lincoln’s family in Maryland with Octavia and Raven, a final that needed to be focused on without distraction, and other various reasons--all more exciting than the idea of going back home and having to field constant questions about what medical schools she was looking at and why she never seemed to have a boyfriend for any significant period of time.

“I know, mom.” Clarke breathed out. “I’m excited you’re here too.”

“So we’ll see you later? We’ll take you to dinner, catch up.”

“Ok.” Clarke said, and she could practically feel her mom’s smile through the phone. It was the least Clarke could do for them, after they had traveled so far to watch her walk across the stage to receive a ridiculously irrelevant piece of paper while wearing a ridiculously stupid hat.

“Great!” In the background, Clarke could hear her dad’s voice. _Let the kid get some sleep, Abby._ And then his voice was there, in her ear.

“We love you, kiddo. See you later. I promise I won’t let your mom ask too many questions.”

Clarke’s heart swelled with her love with him. Since she was a child, her dad had been her rock. He always knew what to say, when to reach out, and she loved him with fierceness that could not be put into words. “Thank you. I love you too.”

The line went dead and Clarke pulled the phone from her ear and set it down. She sat there for a moment, already running through the things she would say to her mom, and then Lexa appeared in the doorway.

In those few minutes on the phone, Clarke had completely forgotten about the earlier tension, and though the memory of it came back to her now, she couldn’t find it in herself to continue that discussion. Besides, Lexa was looking at her with gentle eyes and a tiny piece of pancake stuck to her chin and Clarke couldn’t do anything other than smile up at her.

“Anyone important?” Lexa looked at Clarke questioningly. She walked forward and sat on the edge of the bed gently. Not touching Clarke, but close enough that her hair brushed Clarke’s shoulder, sending goosebumps down her spine.

“Just my parents,” said Clarke. “They want to see me later.”

“Sounds nice,” replied Lexa, and Clarke looked at her sideways, strain evident on her face.

“You don’t know my mother,” Clarke said, and Lexa’s heart hurt for her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She means well. It’s just...hard, sometimes.”

Lexa looked at Clarke and saw the tiredness that had crept into her eyes, exhaustion that she was entirely to blame for.

“Do you…” Lexa gestured at the bed behind them. “You look tired. You should sleep.”

Clarke nodded, the sudden fatigue rendering words an expendable form of communication. She pulled her legs up into the bed and laid her head on the pillow, golden hair splayed out behind her. Lexa reached out and ran her hand over Clarke’s arm, ending at Clarke’s chin. She cupped it gently and leaned down to kiss her. Clarke’s eyes were closed, her breathing evening out already, and Lexa hoped that Clarke understood that this kiss meant _thank you_ and it meant _you are special_ and it meant _goodbye_ all at once. Lexa pushed off of the bed and gathered her clothes. She’d put them on outside the bedroom, so as not to disturb Clarke. When all her things were in her arms, she turned and padded towards the doorway. A slight prickle ran up her neck, a feeling like she’d forgotten something. She knew what it meant. She shouldn’t turn around. That would be bad. That would be against her rules…

But fuck it, those rules were already long broken. Lexa turned around.

Clarke was looking right at her. “You should stay,” she whispered from the bed, and Lexa’s legs moved without any thought on her part.

There was a chance she’d regret this later. There was a chance she’d never see Clarke Griffin again after this day. But Lexa knew, way down in the dark chambers of her sealed off heart, that both of those things were probably not true.

In the half light of dawn, Lexa watched the sun rise on Clarke’s bare skin and wondered why rules existed when breaking them felt so goddamn good.

And just as Lexa was beginning to let fall asleep, just as she felt herself giving in to her own body’s weariness, she heard Clarke speak, low and gravelly.

“Stay with me,” she said.

“I am,” Lexa replied and Clarke shifted backwards a little in Lexa’s arms, so that they were more fully entwined.

“I meant for the day. Spend the day with me.”

Lexa tensed a little bit at those words. Her breath caught in her throat. She opened her mouth to speak, not sure if she was going to like what would come out…

“As friends,” Clarke interrupted her. “Just as friends.”

And there it was. Clarke was giving her a key, an out. Because if Clarke was just her friend, spending the day with her was acceptable, normal even. Clarke was saving her--saving them.

“As friends.” Lexa felt the tension drain from her body as she nodded against the back of Clarke’s neck.

(And if she had a vague thought that friends were good but she could see Clarke Griffin being more than a friend, and if she thought for a fleeting moment that Clarke sleeping in her arms was the best thing she had felt in far too long...well then those thoughts were quickly submerged in the dark black depths of her dreamless slumber. And when she woke up, they were lost completely).


	2. Chapter 2

**Saturday May 3, 1997 -** **22 Years Old**

“ _The space enclosed between the left and right pleural sacs, called the mediastinum, is divided into the superior and inferior mediastina. The latter is further subdivided into the anterior, middle, and posterior mediastinum.”_

Clarke glanced at the clock above her desk. The tiny red arm continued its ceaseless rotation around the circle, shaving little slivers of time off of the day.

_“The anterior mediastinum lies between the sternal body and pericardium. It contains only a little extra-pleural fat and some lymph nodes associated with the internal thoracic vessels. Above this, in the ventral edge of the superior mediastinum, lies the thymus. In most adults, the thymus is reduced to a mass of fat containing small islands of thymic tissue.”_

Clarke directed her eyes towards the clock again. Only a minute had passed. She looked over her shoulder at the half finished painting on her easel, which stood in the corner of her room, surrounded by creased tubes of acrylic paint in various colors. The area around the center of the painting was completely blank. It gaped at her, the pebbled white canvas begging for a brush to streak color over its surface, to give it a breath of life.

It was going to be a painting of the earth as it looked from space. Clarke had spent a week working on the earth itself, mixing various shades of blues and browns and greens so that the earth’s surface was represented in the most detailed way. One of the green paints had given her pause, the deep green shade nagging at the corner of her brain, reminding her of something, until she realized that she was thinking of Lexa’s eyes. She had smiled faintly at the tube in her hand, feeling a bit ridiculous, and then she had used it to fill in some portions of Australia, where Lexa actually was at that very moment. She wondered what Lexa was doing, briefly thought about writing her a letter, but decided against it. Lexa didn’t need Clarke bothering her while she was on vacation, even if Clarke did miss her more than she’d like to let on, even if it had been weeks since they last spoke.

The rest of the painting was incomplete, and as Clarke looked at it, her hands itched to grab a brush and get started once again. She could get to work on the area surrounding the earth--outer space and all its celestial bodies. A black tube of paint lay right in front of the easel, pristine and untouched, teasing her.

But Clarke couldn’t paint right now. She had an anatomy final to study for. She had to barricade the insistent stream of inspiration through her brain and dam it with dense medical terminology that was about as interesting as watching mud dry.

Clarke sighed heavily and turned her tired eyes back to the textbook.

She read for another fifteen minutes before she heard footsteps in the hallway and a body thud into her door, opening it wide.

“How’s it going, nerd? Still studying nerd stuff?”

Clarke swiveled around in her chair and rolled her eyes at the girl who now stood before her, hand on hip.

“Raven, you realize that most people would consider engineering nerdier than medical science? You’re studying physics. That’s peak nerd.”

She and Raven had somehow ended up at the same school for their graduate programs--Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland--and now they were living together. They bickered constantly, but both knew that there was no one else they’d rather live with.

“Please don’t insult me. I’m studying much more than physics. And besides, I don’t look like a nerd. You however…” Raven reached out and plucked Clarke’s tortoiseshell reading glasses from off her face, making Clarke lunge forward for them. “You definitely look like a nerd.”

Clarke held her hand out and fixed Raven with her most menacing glare. “Give them back, Raven.”

Raven twirled the glasses between her fingers. “Come get them, Griffin.”

A deep, gravelly voice sounded from behind Raven’s shoulder. “Stop pestering her,” Bellamy said as strode into the room and grabbed the glasses lightly from Raven’s hand with one fluid movement. He stopped in front of Clarke’s chair and rested them gently back on Clarke’s face.

“You ruin everything,” Raven said, but her words were ignored as Clarke lept up with a shriek and wound her arms around Bellamy’s neck.

“Bellamy!”

It had been a long time since she’d seen him. Almost a year, in fact. He had joined the army reserve right after their graduation, training for just a few months at a base on the east coast before being deployed to South Korea soon after. They had been in touch a little, through the occasional postcard or letter, but they had an unspoken understanding that they were both leading very different, very busy lives, and that they could catch up on it all later.

Still, Clarke had missed him.

“Let me take a look at you.” Clarke said, standing back and holding him at arm’s length.

Bellamy had left her as a secretly goofy, shaggy haired boy who loved just two things very, very much: video games and his sister. The boy standing before her was still a boy, yes, but he was clearly on the cusp of manhood. He had clipped his hair short, closer to his head, and the barest hint of stubble clung to his jaw and cheeks. Clarke could see how his broad shoulders filled out his army t-shirt in a way that they would not have before. But she could also see two new worry lines etching his brow.

“Alright Princess, that’s enough. I feel like I’m under a microscope,” Bellamy said.

He reached out and wrapped her in his arms, lifting her up off the floor for a moment before depositing her back on the ground. He smiled down at her and Clarke playfully ran her hand down his arm to squeeze his bicep.

“But I was admiring your new muscles! They’re twice the size they were when you left.”

Bellamy shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a stud.”

Clarke reached up to gently scrape his jaw with her knuckles. “Yes, and always so humble about it too.”

Raven pretended to barf. “Ok you two, get a room.”

Clarke stepped back from Bellamy, keeping one arm wrapped around his waist, and smirked. “You jealous?”

“Hardly.”

Bellamy reached over to wrap his free arm around Raven’s shoulders, drawing her to his other side. “Ah, I’ve missed you guys.” He leant down and kissed Raven’s forehead, then murmured against it, “Especially you.”

Clarke pressed her hand to her chest in mock horror at Bellamy’s admission, but there was no real feeling behind it. She loved Bellamy, but she knew she would never be _in love_ with him. And seeing Raven try to hide her smile at Bellamy’s affection made Clarke’s heart swell with happiness for the two of them. One of these days they’d stop pretending they didn’t have feelings for each other and finally make it official. Clarke could not wait for that day, though she was a little worried about what Octavia’s reaction would be.

Raven broke away from them and turned to Clarke, rubbing her hands together conspiratorially.

“Alright, enough of this crap. Let’s get to the real reason we’re here.”

Clarke looked at her questioningly.

“We’re breaking you out,” Raven said.

“No,” Clarke answered, backing away from them with her palms held outward, like a prisoner begging for mercy. “No way. You know I have my anatomy final tomorrow.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “Clarke, you’ve been glued to that textbook for the past week. You got A’s on all of your exams. You’ll pass this. It’s not rocket science.” Raven smirked at that last part, appreciating her own irony in saying that when she was, in fact, studying rocket science.

“Thank you for those encouraging words,” Clarke drawled sarcastically, “but I really need to make sure I do well on this.”

Raven nudged Bellamy with her shoulder then, encouraging him to jump in. He shook his head no at her but she turned on her most ferocious face and for a brief moment, he looked a little scared.

Clarke watched this all with amusement.

“Clarke,” Bellamy said carefully, his gaze directed at Raven, measuring her reaction. “It is my first day back. You should come out with us. Lincoln and Octavia are going to meet us out, and we’re going to have a great time.” As the menace slipped from Raven’s face, he turned so that he was facing Clarke. “Plus, you’re the smartest person I know.” Raven punched him in the back, hard. “Sorry, second smartest. You’ll kill this test. What’s a few hours less studying really gonna do?”

He looked at her with his widest eyes and biggest smile and truthfully Clarke had known since Raven burst through the door that she was going to give in. She just liked to draw it out a little.

“Fine,” Clarke said, heaving an exaggeratedly heavy sigh. “But just for a little.”

“Of course,” Raven said, though Clarke didn’t miss the mischievous twinkle in her eye.

Clarke placed a post it on the page in her textbook, then closed it with a heavy thud.

“Well, let’s get going then.”

The three of them walked through Clarke and Raven’s apartment and out the door, down the three flights of stairs towards the lobby. As they were passing the mailroom, a flash of white caught Clarke’s eye.

“Hold on a second, guys!” she called to Raven and Bellamy, who were walking a little ahead of her. She jogged over to their mail cubby and saw a few stacked envelopes sitting there. Clarke flipped through them quickly, impatiently. There was a cable bill and a stack of leaflets advertising coupons for their local grocery store, along with some junk mail and credit card offers. At the bottom though, something made Clarke’s heart stop.

There was a letter. Addressed in neat cursive and postmarked from Australia.

Lexa.

“What’s taking so long, Princess?” Raven called out, and Clarke left the other mail in the cubby but took the letter. She hurried back to her friends, waving the envelope in her hand.

“Sorry,” Clarke said. “Just got a letter from Lexa.”

Bellamy nodded his head understandingly, but Raven waggled her eyebrows lasciviously.

“Where is that hot piece of ass now?” Raven asked.

“Australia.” Clarke said. “And please stop it, you know we’re just friends now.”

Raven raised her eyebrows at Clarke. “Sure.”

It was mostly true. After their one night together, both had agreed that just staying friends was the best option for them. And if Clarke’s stomach had dropped and her words had sounded a little hollow when she agreed to that...well, she could ignore those knee-jerk reactions as long as it meant she still had Lexa in her life. So their friendship had blossomed, and they had kept in communication over the last year.

It had been a while since they last spoke though, and Clarke wanted so badly to stay there and read the letter. She wanted to know what was happening in Lexa’s life. She missed her, missed that perfect, impassive expression that belied a surprisingly soft interior. But she looked at Raven and Bellamy’s expectant faces and knew that she couldn’t take time away from them, from her friends that were actually there, to focus on something from Lexa.

Clarke brushed the letter from her mind and stuffed it into her back pocket. She strode forward, past Raven and Bellamy. “Well, you guys coming?” she tossed over her shoulder, as if they were the ones keeping her waiting, and they both smiled, following her out the front door and onto the street.

**\------**

Lexa stood in front of the floor to ceiling glass doors that led out to the balcony of her hotel room. In her hand she held a tumbler of scotch on the rocks, an unfortunate habit she had picked up from her Senator stepfather, who was never shy about the fact that he would have preferred a son in her place. _Drink. Don’t make that face. This will be a useful skill when you need to rub shoulders with the guys on Capitol Hill. It’s a man’s drink._ The glass was sweating, trickles of water rolling down the sides, and Lexa caught them on the tips of her fingers absentmindedly before bringing the glass to her mouth and downing half of it in one gulp. She had already had two drinks and she had a pleasant buzz going.

Through the glass she could see tiny dots moving to and fro along the bustling sidewalks of Sydney harbor. She watched them with a kind of detached curiosity, wondering what they were doing, who they were going to see, where their lives were leading. She wanted to be closer to that colorful energy, so she slid the glass door aside and stepped out onto the cool tile of the balcony. Immediately the fresh air filled her lungs, and she breathed it in gratefully as she settled into a reclining lawnchair.

Night was beginning to fall, and the hazy pale of the darkening sky seemed to match the alcohol induced haze in Lexa’s head. She allowed her head to fall heavily back onto the chair’s headrest, and her eyes started to close of their own accord. She turned her head to the side, thinking she could take a quick catnap before doing anything else with her day. Her half closed eyes focused sleepily on a patch of ocean she could see through the metal bars of the balcony, and she felt something nag at the back of her swiftly clouding mind. Something about that particular color of blue...a blue that made something deep in Lexa’s chest twinge, drawing up images of laughing, flashing eyes and a pretty mouth opened in laughter…

Clarke.

Lexa sat upright, her head spinning slightly.

She hadn’t heard from Clarke in a while. She should write to her now. Yes, that’s what she’d do.

She got on her feet determinedly and went back inside, pulling a pen and a pad of paper embossed with the hotel’s logo out of a drawer in the desk that sat by the television.

She settled down in the desk chair and started to write.

_Dear Clarke_

She paused. That felt slightly formal. She crossed it out.

_Hello Clarke_

That also felt odd. She grimaced, downed the rest of her scotch, and ripped the paper off the pad, throwing it aside in a crumpled ball. The new page glared up at her, annoyingly empty.

_Clarke_

That should do it. But what to say now? _I looked at the ocean and thought about your eyes_ or _I just remembered that we are getting close to the one year anniversary of us sleeping together_ or _I’m a little tipsy right now and I miss you?_

No, none of that was usable.

Instead, Lexa started to write about her trip.

_Australia is a very interesting country. It feels like it could be its own planet, almost. It’s so wild in places, full of animals that could kill you. But then it also has these really beautiful beaches and incredible cities that just radiate a particular kind of energy. The people are so gorgeous and full of life. So far, I’ve visited Gold Coast and Melbourne, and now I’m in Sydney._

_I’m writing to you from a hotel right on Sydney Harbor. It’s amazing. I have this huge glass wall, and the balcony looks out over the harbor. You can see the opera house and the ocean. The view goes for miles. You would like it._

_Remember that fight we got into a while ago? I scoffed at you for wanting to travel so much. Well, I apologize for that now. I can see the appeal, though I don’t know if I’d want to spend too much time doing this. But for now, it feels like it was the perfect thing to do right after college (even if my stepfather says otherwise)._

As the words came out, Lexa could feel the alcohol hitting her harder, fueling her. For a moment she paused, wondering if it was really the best idea to be writing to Clarke when she was already three drinks in, but there was no turning back now.

_I’ve also thought about our conversation about the future. You know, the one where you said I was a womanizing future politician? When you imagined your future you said you saw yourself traveling and painting, and I said that that sounded nice but idealistic. I think I said you could be saving lives instead. And to be honest, I stand by that. You’re smart Clarke, and talented, and you are going to make a great doctor one day. You will heal so many people and save so many lives. I believe that. But I also think that sometimes we need a break. By the time you get this letter, you’ll probably have just finished your final exams. And I’m sure Abby has you lined up to do an internship at a hospital or something. But don’t you deserve a break in between those things?_

Lexa knew that she was rambling, and she wondered if anything that she was writing was even making sense. But, frankly, she didn’t want to read through what she’d written just to make sure it was ok. So she powered on.

_What I’m really trying to say is that you should come visit me. Here, in Australia. I have a few more weeks before I start my internship on Capitol Hill. I’m heading to Byron Bay next week, to finish off the trip, and you could meet me there. I heard it’s full of beaches and surfers. We could go hiking, scuba diving. Anything we want. Anything you want, actually._

Here Lexa paused again. She stared at the half filled second page of the letter. She was about to do something stupid--but didn’t she always do that with Clarke?

_I’ll even buy your ticket. You can fly out on...let’s say May 7th. That should give you enough time. You can fly out of BWI. I'll try to get you a nonstop flight from there. Bring a book on the plane. A long one. It’s quite a flight. Then spend a week or two with me here. Leave all that biology and organic chemistry behind for a bit. We’ll get tan (well maybe you will at least). Eat whatever we want, drink from sunrise to sunset. Then we can try to get a layover on the flight home. Maybe Bangkok, or Dubai. Somewhere exotic. Think about it._

Lexa could not believe what she had written. The alcohol had gone to her head far more than she thought. It was if she had reverted back to her high school days, when she had rebelled against obligation, against the future that her parents had already seemed to have planned for her.

It wasn’t the worst feeling in the world. She could regret it later. For now, it seemed to capture exactly what she wanted to say.

Lexa was considering how to end the letter when she heard quiet footsteps behind her. A pair of arms wrapped around her shoulders, the hands smoothing against her collarbone, and she felt a chin rest against the top of her head.

“What are you doing?” The voice was husky, the Australian accent undeniably attractive.

Lexa shuffled the pages in front of her.

“Just finishing up a letter to a friend back home,” Lexa said.

The girl moved to Lexa’s side, into her line of vision. Her hair, wet from the shower, was a honey blonde color, her eyes a bright hazel. Truthfully, Lexa was having a hard time remembering her name. Holly, maybe? Or Hannah? Their eyes had met during happy hour at the hotel bar that day, and next thing Lexa knew, they were tangled in the impossibly crisp white sheets of her hotel bed. The sheets were not so crisp now.

Holly (yes that had to have been it) leaned down and captured Lexa’s mouth in a hungry kiss, her tongue flicking out to lick the seam of Lexa’s lips.

“Hurry up.” Her hooded eyes told Lexa why she needed to hurry.

Lexa nodded and Holly walked away to finish up in the bathroom. Lexa focused her attention back on the letter, the taste of Holly’s kiss slightly bitter in her mouth.

_I miss you, Clarke. It’s been too long. Come visit, you won’t regret it. Australia’s waiting for you._

It felt a little cheesy, but otherwise acceptable, and Lexa signed off without a _Sincerely_ or a _Love,_ instead opting to write her name neatly at the bottom. At the last second she added a small _x_ after her signature. A single kiss.

She sealed it and addressed it, setting it aside on the desk.

She thought about Clarke, halfway across the world. She wondered what she was doing in that moment. Daydreaming in class, maybe, or bickering with Raven. She hoped she was happy.

Later, after Holly had fallen asleep after round two, she snuck down to the hotel lobby and asked them to mail the letter for her, express. For the briefest of moments her sober mind tried to convince her not to send it. It was too sappy, bordering on emotions that Lexa was always careful to keep in check. But something stopped her. Something that felt a little bit like recklessness and a lot like hope.

 **\------**  

Clarke had a wonderful night out, staying out a full two hours later than she meant to. At dinner, Octavia and Lincoln regaled her with tales of their travel. They had just hiked the Appalachian Trail and were planning on doing the Pacific Crest Trail next. Bellamy told them about South Korea, and showed off by speaking a few words of Korean (though Raven was quick to point out that no one there could check him for accuracy, as none of them could speak Korean, so he could be speaking gibberish for all they knew). And Raven kept buying bottles of wine for the table, so that by the end of the meal they were all full and giddy and thoroughly content.

The whole group decided to walk Clarke home, and they made their way arm in arm, as if they were so happy to be together that they could not physically let each other go. Clarke walked with her arms wound around Bellamy and Lincoln, joking about having a harem of men, and Raven and Octavia walked ahead of them, arms linked tightly, heads pressed together. At some point, Octavia started chanting some faux military march in a high, off key voice, and Bellamy strutted ridiculously for them, puffing his chest out dramatically and trying to look pompous, and Clarke laughed so hard and so long that Lincoln became worried for her.

And at some point, somewhere between Main Street and Kass Lane, the now crinkled letter in Clarke’s back pocket worked it’s way slowly up and up and upward still until it fell gently to the ground, unnoticed with all the ruckus being caused by the group ahead. The paper drifted slowly to the sidewalk, a flash of white in the darkness of the night, resting there like just another scrap of litter on the ground. Later, a small gust of wind blew it onto the side of the road, where a small stray dog, wandering forlornly in the night, would find it and nudge it with his nose curiously until it fell into the open hole of a gutter. There, it sank into the dirty, black water, the pages slowly becoming soggy and wet, until the words faded away completely.

The next morning, Clarke would remember the names of all the bones in the human body for her exam, but forget about Lexa’s letter.

And when May 7th came and went and Lexa still hadn't received a response, she convinced herself that maybe it was for the best. She and Clarke were just friends. In fact, it had been Lexa who insisted on that. Lexa had crossed her own line with that letter, and Clarke's non-response was to remind her of that. It was not a surprise.

But that didn't make it sting any less. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Sunday May 3, 1998 - 23 years old**

“Hi, may I speak to Ms. Johnson?” The girl’s voice was slightly wobbly, betraying her nerves. She fiddled with the phone cord as she spoke, wrapping it around her index finger before unwinding it and doing the same thing with her middle finger.

“Um….my name is Maria. I’m...I’m calling as a volunteer for Senator Cooper. We’re talking to our friends and neighbors about the Senator. Are you familiar with him?”

From her viewpoint at the side of Maria’s table, Lexa watched the girl intently.

“Oh, you’re not familiar with him? Well then…” Here Maria paused to consult the laminated script that was sitting on the table in front of her. “....may I ask what your biggest concern is for this election cycle?”

Maria paused for a long moment. The person on the phone was clearly giving her an earful, and Lexa watched as Maria nodded several times, her eyes still glued to her script. Lexa could tell that Maria was preoccupied, and whatever was being said to her was going in one ear and out the other.

After a minute or so, the person on the other end of the line seemed to have finished what they were saying. Maria continued, her voice stuttered and robotic. “Ok, Ms. Johnson. I just wanted you to know that Senator Cooper is definitely working hard, knocking on doors and listening to voters’ concerns. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, voters want a change in leadership so that education can be addressed, just as you mentioned. It is one of the Senator’s top priorities…So, can Senator Cooper count on your vote for office in November?”

Lexa shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The movement seemed to startle Maria, as she looked up at Lexa and promptly blushed a shade of bright scarlet before fixedly returning her gaze to her script once again. The rest of her phone call came out rushed and breathless.

“That’s great. May I get your email address so that we can keep you posted on campaign events and volunteer opportunities?” Maria took a pen and wrote down the address given to her, her tongue poking out of her mouth as she concentrated. “Got it. Thank you again for your time, Ms. Johnson. Have a great day!” She promptly placed the phone back on its cradle with perhaps a little more force than she intended to, resulting in the phone being knocked off the edge of the table with a loud crash.

Lexa and Maria went for it at the same time, though Lexa beat her to it, bending down swiftly and depositing the phone back in its original place before Maria even had time to get out from behind the table.

“Thanks,” Maria said, in that same breathless voice she had used to end her call.

“You’re welcome,” Lexa said. She regarded the girl in front of her, noting the still flushed cheeks and the jittery movements that gave away her nerves. “So…”

“I know, I was terrible.” Maria interrupted before Lexa could even start. “I _hate_ talking to people on the phone. I feel so stupid.” She hit her forehead with the heel of her hand and sighed dejectedly.

Lexa smoothed her face into that impassive mask that her volunteers had gotten used to, though underneath it she did feel bad for the girl. “You were not _terrible_. You were nervous, and that came out in your voice. And you didn’t listen when she said what her biggest concern was, you just followed the script exactly.” Maria stared up at her, hanging on her every word. “You can engage with them, be personable. The script is a suggestion, really. We want you to sound like a real human, not like a robot reading lines.”

Lexa watched as Maria’s face crumpled slightly. She was taking this hard. Maria was a brand new volunteer for their campaign. She was a sophomore in high school, just 16 years old and astonishingly overeager. This was her third day at the office, and her first time ever trying to work the phones. Lexa understood what she was going through.

“But you know what?” Lexa said. “Those things are completely normal. You didn’t do any worse than Addison over there.” Lexa nodded to a blonde boy in his early 20s who was sitting at the table behind Maria’s.

“Hey!” Addison exclaimed, and Maria giggled nervously.

Lexa continued, “Just keep that voice steady. Get a little more comfortable with the script. And always remember that you are an integral part of this campaign. We could not operate without you.” Lexa allowed the barest hint of a smile to grace her lips, and Maria looked up at her gratefully.

“Ok. Thanks Ms. Woods.”

It was odd hearing people address her like that. She was only 23 after all, just six years older than Maria. The “Ms.” sounded too old to her ears.

“You can call me Lexa, like everyone else does.”

Maria nodded.

“Alright, give it another try please.”

Maria gave another nod, body trembling with the force of her desperation to please, then she turned and eagerly scanned the list of phone numbers that she was supposed to try that day

Lexa lingered for one moment, listening to the beginning of Maria’s next call. She was already doing better, her voice much less tremulous than it had been the previous time. Content for the moment, Lexa continued past Maria. The tables that the phone volunteers sat at were long and thin, set up three tables wide and four rows deep. Lexa walked in the space between the rows, listening in on calls over the volunteers’ shoulders, making sure everyone was doing everything correctly. When she passed Addison’s chair he turned suddenly and said under his breath, “I think she’s got a crush on you.”

Lexa fixed him with a piercing glare. “Ridiculous. Get back to work, Addison.”

He grinned and saluted her, “Aye, aye Commander.”

Addison was an imbecile.

As Lexa entered the third row she heard a loud, petulant voice call out from behind her. “Excuse me, Lexa!” Lexa recognized the voice immediately. It belonged to a middle aged volunteer named Debra, who clearly thought she was much too important to be making phone calls. Lexa gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and turned around.

“Yes, Debra. How can I help you?” Lexa took pride in the fact that her voice was smooth, neutral, giving away nothing of her actual thoughts.

Debra, a slightly overweight woman with a tendency towards awful pastel prints, crossed her arms and gave Lexa a sickly sweet smile. “I’m tired of calling people.”

“I am sorry. Would you like to take a break?” Lexa once again tried to keep her voice as even as possible, though this time she heard a slight edge creep into it.

“No,” Debra said, that smile still plastered to her face. “I’d like to do something else. Don’t you have any office work to do? I’m good with budgeting, or doing secretarial work. I’m the secretary of the PTA at my son’s middle school.” Lexa could tell that this was a fact that Debra was particularly proud of.

“Debra. I’ve told you before. You can either do doors or phones. We do not have office work for volunteers.” She was getting impatient.

Debra, however, still seemed woefully oblivious to Lexa’s growing anger.

“Yes, you’ve told me. I just think it’s a _little_ pointless for me to be spending hours on the phone when our opponent is spending every waking moment and every cent of his campaign slandering us in the press. These phone calls aren’t going to do anything when the voters are constantly bombarded by negative commercials. I think I should be doing something more important. Like brainstorming commercials that will refute what the other guy is saying. That would be more useful, yes?”

Lexa felt the muscle in her jaw clench. Clearly, Debra had too high an opinion of herself, and absolutely no knowledge of how they were running this campaign. But the woman was volunteering her time to be here. Lexa had to keep her cool, even in the face of such an overzealous idiot.

“Thank you for offering Debra, but we have no plans at this time to run any counter ads. Let our opponent do the mudslinging, Senator Cooper will win without any name calling. Now, you are a volunteer, not an employee. As such, you are able to do either phones or doors. And, Debra, you are exceptionally good on the phone. We would hate to lose you there.” Lexa laced her voice with false flattery, and it seemed to appease Debra this time.

“Well, thank you for saying that, Lexa. It feels good to get some appreciation around here. Maybe you should think about letting us know that more often? I’m sure your stepfather would approve. I’d imagine he wants all his campaign volunteers to be happy and appreciated.” And with that, Debra turned with a slight _hmph_ and picked up her phone once again.

Lexa’s blood boiled.

Most of the time, her volunteers were great. She saw a lot of eager high schoolers, a lot of retirees who had nothing else to do with their day, who found volunteering for a political campaign to be a novel and exciting endeavor. People from those groups were almost always fantastic workers. But Debra’s type, they’d turn up every so often to loudly exclaim that they were above making phone calls or knocking on doors, and those were the ones that wore on Lexa’s nerves. Just like right now.

She needed a break.

She looked at the clock. It was only four in the afternoon. She still had plenty of time left in that stifling office. She could take a few minutes to herself. She waved over towards Chelsea, their volunteer coordinator, getting the other woman’s attention before jerking her finger towards the back door. Chelsea nodded at her, understanding flashing between them instantly.

Lexa went into her tiny corner office and grabbed her purse, then went into the kitchen and made herself a thoroughly unappetizing mug of instant coffee. With both in hand, she nudged open the back door and stepped outside, taking in a long, deep breath, like a drowning person who finally manages to break the surface of the water.

The back door of the office led to a quiet, clean alleyway. There were a couple rickety chairs set up against the wall by the door, and Lexa settled herself in one gratefully. She slipped off her shoes with a groan of pleasure, took a long sip of her coffee, then leaned her head back against the cool brick of the wall. She closed her eyes.

Working on a political campaign was not all what she had imagined it to be. She was the volunteer supervisor, an above entry level position, and yet she still worked seven days a week (hence why she was working on a Sunday), 12-18 hours per day. She was in charge of an amorphous group of volunteers, all with varying levels of experience, and she had to make sure that they were making enough calls and knocking on enough doors to satisfy her campaign manager. On top of that, she was in charge of data input and organizing events like fundraisers and watch parties. It was an unforgiving job, and she was paid a paltry yearly salary for it. She was tired and overworked and her social life was almost nonexistent (though to be fair it wasn’t as though it was a party fest before).

She knew, though, she should be more grateful. After a short stint as an intern on Capitol Hill, her stepfather had offered her this position in the main office of his senatorial campaign.

 _“It won’t be fun. But it is necessary. You will learn a lot. I expect you to do great things Alexandria.”_ In that moment she had thought back to the promise she made to herself, when her mother died. She would make her proud by following in her stepfather’s footsteps, as her mother had so desperately wanted. She had shaken her stepfather’s hand assuredly, accepting his offer, eyes clear and chin high. She had a vision in her head, of changing lives through politics, of shaping American history. They were lofty goals, idealistic even, but Lexa knew she could reach them.

And yet...all she had felt while working on the campaign so far was a kind of empty disappointment. She didn’t know what it was. Restlessness, perhaps, or something else entirely. She had been there for less than a year and yet every hour felt like a day, and every day felt like a week, and every week felt like an eternity. She had goals yes, many, many goals, but what she was during currently made her feel very far from achieving them.

With a sigh, she pushed her head off the wall and rummaged around in her purse. Her fingers closed around a small, rectangular box that rested at the bottom of the purse, and she pulled it out. It was a pack of American Spirits, the yellow box. She fumbled in a small side pocket and pulled out a lighter, then lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply, the smoke filling her lungs and clearing her brain of all thoughts but the singular pleasure that nicotine provided her.

She could remember the exact moment she got hooked. It was the first day she had started work at her stepfather’s campaign. A supervisor from one of the field offices had come in to show her the ropes. He was a man in his late 30s, premature gray hair, baggy oxford shirt with an impeccable knotted tie. He ran through his spiel politely and effortlessly, but Lexa had still felt so supremely overwhelmed, though she was careful not to show it. She’d left the office that first day at 9pm, body alight with an odd mix of excitement and exhaustion, and as she turned the corner towards their parking lot she’d seen him, leaning against a wall, hand cupped around the flame as he lit a cigarette. He’d beckoned her over.

“You did well today,” he’d said, and she’d nodded politely. “Do you mind if I ask how you got this job? You’re one of the youngest I’ve seen.”

“Senator Cooper is my stepfather.” She said it in a way that she hoped sounded both like gratefulness, but also an acknowledgement of the nepotism that carved an easier path for her than for others. It was a tone she’d adopt hundreds, even thousands, of times afterwards, with each repetition of that very question.

He’d nodded and looked her up and down, not in a vulgar way, but in a way that seemed to measuring her up, appraising her worth. “I see. Following in the old man’s footsteps.” He took a long drag of his cigarette, eyes half closing, and Lexa watched the tendrils of smoke drift out of his mouth, like ghosts in the night. Then he turned his gaze back to her. “I think you’ll make it. You seem like you’re made of the right kind of metal.” They were the kind of words that, when said by a relative stranger, had the effect of being both slightly too personal and yet flattering all the same. Lexa, for her part, appreciated them.

He’d offered her a cigarette then, from his pack of yellow American Spirits, telling her he’d cut down to about three a day because he was trying to quit. She’d surprised herself by accepting one. And for the rest of the week that he was there, the two of them would duck out together during their lunch break and after they got off, sharing meaningless conversation over the burning orange pinpoint of a cigarette butt. When the week ended he said a gruff goodbye and left, but that little yellow pack had been a permanent fixture in her life ever since. She never let herself go too overboard though, for the most part sticking to the man’s regime of three per day.

Lexa reasoned to herself that it was normal to develop vices while working on a political campaign. She’d heard stories of people becoming reliant on junk food or drugs or secret office hookups to get through a day. Lexa’s vices just happened to be instant coffee and cigarettes.

For a brief moment, she imagined what Clarke would think about these new tastes of hers. The coffee she’d probably be fine with. But Lexa could just hear Clarke’s voice in her head when she thought about the other girl’s opinion of cigarettes. _Those are horrible, Lexa. They will kill you._ And then Lexa would protest and say she was absolutely not addicted, and Clarke would roll her eyes and fix Lexa with her steely blue gaze. _You’ve always been terrible at lying. And I won’t just sit here and watch you kill yourself slowly_. Lexa couldn’t help but smile wryly at this ridiculous daydream version of Clarke.

“Something funny, Woods? I don’t believe I’ve seen you smile that big before. Or ever, really.”

Lexa sat up with start and found herself being pinned under amused brown eyes and a haughty smirk.

“Anya…” Lexa sat up straighter and reflexively reached to smooth out the front of her white blouse. She threw the half finished cigarette into an ashtray that she kept under the chair. “I wasn’t expecting you in today. Aren’t you supposed to be in Cumberland?”

Anya regarded her with that same amused stare. “Got back early. Figured I’d stop by and check in on you.”

“Great.” Lexa stood up and tried to maintain her composure while slipping her feet back into the heels she was wearing that day. She managed it fairly well.

“Shall we?” Lexa asked.

Anya opened the door and gestured inside. “After you.”

 

**\------**

 

“We are killing it in Cumberland. They’re doing two, three thousand doors a day. Lexa, how many did we do yesterday?”

Lexa consulted a stack of paper in front of her. “Twelve hundred,” she said.

“What about the day before that?”

“Nine hundred and eighty five.”

Anya slammed her palm on the table. “That just isn’t good enough.”

It was 6 o’clock now, and all of the higher ups were crammed into Anya’s office for a meeting. Anya was her father’s campaign manager. A Harvard grad in her early 30s, Anya was young for the job, and many had been wary of the Senator’s choice in hiring her. But what Anya lacked in age and experience, she made up for in sheer intelligence, willpower, and tirelessness. She was fiercely loyal and staunch in her beliefs, a born leader. Lexa respected her greatly, and they had gotten along fine so far, though  in Anya’s words and actions Lexa occasionally sensed a certain disdain for her easy position as the stepdaughter of a politician. Anya had not come from politics, had in fact grown up in a very poor suburb of New York and worked her way to Harvard and beyond. But if Anya did think less of Lexa because of this, she had yet to say so outright.

“But Cumberland always goes more conservative. Of course we’d have to work harder there,” Chelsea said.

Anya whirled on her. “That may be true, but that doesn’t mean we can treat Baltimore like a cake walk. I’m taking it no one of bought a copy of The Sun this afternoon?”

Off their silence and blank stares, Anya took a folded newspaper from inside a pocket in her blazer and threw it on the table.

John, a tall, nerdy sort who worked for their PR department, picked up the paper and scanned it. Lexa watched as his normally happy expression darkened just slightly. “Our lead went down.” He looked around the table. “Polls have us at 58 percent now.”

The room grew very quiet. Just a week ago the papers had projected Senator Cooper to be sitting at a comfortable 64 percent. Anya crossed her arms and smiled grimly. “Those attack ads have clearly had an effect on our numbers. The Senator still insists on zero rebuttals, so we’re going to have to come up with another way to boost those numbers. John, I want pictures of the Senator with good, hard working people. We need people to trust him again. Chelsea, see if you can get…”

The meeting lasted for a while longer as Anya ran through various tasks she wanted accomplished, and various goals they should set themselves. Finally, after about forty minutes, Anya dismissed everyone. Lexa stood to leave, but stopped when she heard Anya’s voice behind her.

“Woods. Can you stay back for a minute?”

Anya strode by her and closed the door after the last person had left, leaving she and Lexa alone. She gestured for Lexa to sit, and Lexa leaned back into a chair across from Anya’s desk as Anya slipped into her desk chair.

Anya regarded her coolly, her hands pressed together in front of her. “Your numbers are...not good.”

“I know.”

“We need to do better. You need to do better."

“I understand.”

“I have a list of figures here. Goals for next week.” Anya slid a small piece of paper over to Lexa. “I expect us to hit them all. It shouldn’t be too difficult, but everyone will have to be operating at their highest gear. I also want you to organize a watch party for everyone here, for the Senator’s speech next week in Annapolis. Food, drinks, the works. We need to boost morale, get people energized again.”

Already Lexa could feel a headache coming on at the amount of work she knew would be involved in these tasks, and she suddenly had the urge to duck out for another cigarette. Instead, she nodded. “I’m on it.”

“Good.” Anya said. “And...is there anyone giving you trouble? Anyone I need to talk to? Put in their place? I know volunteers aren’t always the easiest to work with.” Anya seemed almost excited by the prospect of giving someone a talking to.

Lexa thought of Maria, her blushing face and robotic, broken voice. Then she thought of Debra and her incessant whining, her belief that she was bigger than volunteer work. It would be so easy to have Anya talk to her, remind her where she belonged...but no, the volunteers were her responsibility. She wouldn’t throw anyone under the bus. “No. Everyone is great. Just need to push them harder, I guess.”

She could tell Anya didn’t believe her, but she didn’t say anything. “Alright,” Anya said. “You can go.” She waved her hand at the door.

Lexa got up and turned to go. Her hand was on the door knob when, suddenly, a thought that had been nagging at her for a while bubbled to the surface of her mind, giving her pause.

She looked back at Anya, whose focus was already on a stack of papers in front of her. “Why did you have to say this to me privately? Why didn’t you tell me what you expected of me in the meeting? Like you did with John and everyone else?”

Anya looked up at her blankly. “Are you really asking me this?”

“Yes. I want to know.”

“Ok.” Anya’s tone held the barest hint of impatience, as if she was humoring Lexa. “Well, Woods, as we all know, you’re the daughter of--”

“Step-daughter,” Lexa interrupted.

Anya inclined her head. “Yes, stepdaughter, sure. Regardless, you’re closely related to the Senator. I can’t just berate you in front of the rest of the group when everyone knows that. It would be...off-putting. Demoralizing even.”

Lexa realized with a pang that her suspicions were correct. She was getting special treatment simply because people knew she was technically related to the Senator. It was something she had always suspected, actually had probably known for sure and tried to push to the back of her mind, but hearing it confirmed out loud made her feel tense and helpless. She could not escape her privilege. If Anya was treating her differently because of her stepfather, was everyone else. Would anything she do feel earned?

When Lexa spoke again, her voice wavered slightly with the force of her emotion. “That’s bullshit, Anya. I deserve to be treated like everyone else. I am  _asking_ to be treated like everyone else. I don’t need your secret meetings in your office. Next time, keep it in front of everyone.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and closed the door behind her.

For the rest of the day she stayed in her office, head down, redrawing routes for door volunteers, pulling numbers from the phone bank to call, putting together a preliminary shopping list for the watch party Anya had asked her about.

At 8pm she bid farewell to the last, straggling volunteer--Maria.

“Are you sure I can’t stay here and make some more calls, Lexa? I’m getting really good at it!” Maria looked up at her reverently.

Lexa steered her gently towards the door with a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so happy to hear that, Maria. But we’re good for the day. You have plenty of time to do the phones tomorrow and all the days after that right up until November 3rd.”

Maria, seemingly incapable of talking when Lexa was touching her, let out a little _eep_ of affirmation and scuttled away out the front door, that familiar pink blush washing over face.

Lexa thought that maybe Addison had been right about Maria’s crush after all.

At 9pm, Chelsea, the second to last person to leave, walked by Lexa’s door and saw her sitting at her desk, eyes glued to the papers in front of her, which she was regarding with a very serious look of concentration on her face.

Chelsea shook her head to herself before gently knocking on the frame of the open door.

“All good, Lexa? Almost done for the night?”

Lexa looked up and blinked her tired eyes blearily. “Almost done. Just a little more to get through.”

Chelsea clicked her tongue, chiding her mockingly. “You say that every night.”

“It’s the truth every night.”

“I believe you,” Chelsea said with a heavy sigh. “Hey, we’re at 184! That’s not so bad.”

“Not at all,” Lexa smiled tightly at Chelsea. “Good night, Chelsea. Drive safe.”

“Night.”

184 was the amount of days left until November 3rd, when the general election for Maryland’s one available senate seat would happen. She and Chelsea, inevitably the last people left in the office each night, always said goodnight by reminding each other how many days were left. 184 was really not that big a number, especially compared to how big it had been when Lexa had first started. But on a night like this one, when Lexa felt the weight of the campaign like a boulder on her shoulders, it felt much too large for Lexa’s liking.

At 10pm, the headache that had been threatening Lexa since that afternoon finally made its triumphant appearance, and Lexa decided she could be done for the night. She got up and stretched her legs, then did her rounds of the office, making sure everything was locked up that needed to be locked up, everything turned off that needed to be turned off. Finally, she switched off the overhead lights in the office, exited, and locked the front door.

She was free. And she needed a cigarette.

 

**\------**

 

Clarke’s phone rang loudly, startling her enough that the delicate line she had been painting in a beautiful shade of red turned into a blotch that looked startlingly like a mushroom.

“Fuck!”

She got up quickly, laying her brush gently down on the easel, and sprinted into the kitchen, where the phone hung on the wall next to the refrigerator. She snatched the phone off of its cradle, breathing heavily, and said, “This better be good.”

“Hello, Clarke.”

The voice made her breath catch even more than the running had.

“Lexa. Hi.” Clarke tried unsuccessfully to control her panting.

“Are you having an asthma attack, Clarke?”

Lexa’s voice sounded worn and tired, but her attempt at humor allayed Clarke’s worries about that.

“No. But I _was_ forced to run to pick up the phone. And you made me ruin my painting.”

“I am sorry,” Lexa said solemnly.

“It’s ok, Lexa. And I was exaggerating anyway,” Clarke laughed lightly.

“Where are you?” Lexa asked.

“Home, clearly. Why? Where are you?”

Lexa said something, though it was garbled by static. However, Clarke managed to hear the words “window” and “outside”. She slammed the phone down and ran to the big bay window in her living room that looked out onto the street.

There, in an impeccably starched white blouse and pencil skirt, stood Lexa. She saw Clarke and raised her hand in a wave.

Clarke ran down the three floors to the apartment’s main entrance door and flung it open. Lexa was standing on the doorway, a bottle of wine in hand. She smiled one of her slow smiles, and Clarke had trouble catching her breath again. Clearly, she was out of shape, that was really the only explanation for it…

“I needed a friendly face,” Lexa said, holding the wine out in her hands like some sort of offering.

Clarke took in her friend’s strained expression, the dark circles under her eyes, the coffee stain that was barely visible on the sleeve of her blouse. Without a word, she took the wine, set it on the ground, and wrapped Lexa in a hug.

Lexa was standing on the front stair below the stoop of the door, so for once Clarke had a height advantage. Her arms draped around Lexa’s shoulders, her cheek rested on the crown of Lexa’s head. In this position, Lexa’s face was tucked into Clarke’s neck, her breath grazing Clarke’s collarbones when she exhaled. It was a hot summer night, but Clarke still shivered at the sensation. Lexa was stiff in Clarke’s embrace at first, but relaxed after a moment, her arms coming up to wrap themselves around Clarke’s waist and pull her closer. They stayed like that for a few long beats, their bodies melding into each other, and Clarke whispered between them, “You know I’m always here for you.” It wasn’t the truth, not exactly, because Clarke was just as busy as Lexa most days and rarely available, but it was what Clarke needed to say and what Lexa needed to hear at that moment.

Finally, they pulled apart. Lexa leaned down to pick up the wine again and when she straightened up, she saw Clarke regarding her with an odd expression.

“What?” Lexa asked.

“You smell like shit. Have you been smoking?”

 

\------

 

They were both too tired to even bother pouring the wine into glasses. Instead, they sat on Clarke’s couch, passing the bottle between them. They lay at opposite ends of the couch, both leaning against an arm rest, their legs stretched out at diagonals in front of them, just barely touching each other.

They sat in comfortable silence until the wine was almost half gone, the alcohol dulling their senses and staining their lips darker. Clarke found herself staring at Lexa’s lips as they pursed around the bottle, dark red as the cherries she had bought at the market the other day, but she forced herself to look away.

“So when did you start?”

“Hmm,” Lexa said, bringing the bottle down and holding it in her lap. “Start what?”

“Smoking.” Clarke said, with more judgement in her voice than she had intended.

“Clarke…” Lexa said warningly, her voice snapping around the “k.” “I’d rather not talk about that.”

Clarke looked at her steadily. “Fine.” Lexa looked relieved for a moment, but Clarke couldn’t resist one more remark. “I just hope you know that those will kill you. Fast. I’ve seen smoker’s lungs. It’s not pretty.”

To her surprise and slight chagrin, Lexa laughed quietly, her head tilting back on the armrest. “I knew you would say that.”

“Well, it’s true.”

Lexa’s face grew serious again, and she reached out and lightly squeezed Clarke’s knee comfortingly. “I know they are bad for me, Clarke. But can we please talk about something else?”

Clarke opened her mouth, and Lexa put up a hand to stop her. “Nothing about work either.”

“Fine,” Clarke said. She reached out, palm up, gesturing at the wine bottle. “Stop hogging that then.”

Lexa smiled crookedly. “Sorry, my lady.”

Clarke accepted the bottle and took a long swig. “Ok, so no work talk. No talk about you killing yourself.”

Lexa nodded.

“Well, should we just watch a movie then?”

Normally, Clarke wouldn’t have suggested watching something. She and Lexa got together so infrequently these days that she usually wanted to cherish their time together and spend it catching up or doing something worthwhile. But she could tell that Lexa was tired, that she just needed something to take her mind off of things, so just this once she thought she could let it slide.

She got up and padded over to a bookshelf by the tv, which housed a sizable collection of VCR tapes.

“Any preference?”

Lexa shook her head no.

“Always so helpful,” Clarke teased, and Lexa shrugged her shoulders. Clarke stood and regarded the tapes, then pulled one out, shaking some dust off of it. She popped it into the VCR player, fast forwarding through all the previews, then settled back on the couch.

“Octavia’s favorite,” she said.

The movie began, and Clarke and Lexa sat and watched it, commenting on how attractive Geena Davis was, or how odd Madonna looked with brown hair, or how Clarke wished she had played softball in school. With the flash of the television in the darkened room and the feeling of the wine coursing through their veins, both girls could forget the worries of their everyday life: for Lexa, the strain of spinning her wheels in an exhausting job that was below her, and for Clarke, the rigorous curriculum of a second year medical student. It was a peaceful moment for both of them, a pocket of relaxation in the tumult of their lives. Perhaps that’s why they both fell asleep an hour and two minutes into the movie, at the heartbreaking when Lori Petty was asking Geena Davis why she was so much better at baseball than Lori was.

 

**\------**

 

Clarke woke up with a start. The room was deadly quiet, bathed in the light blue glow of the television screen that signaled that the movie was long over. Clarke looked at the clock on the VCR. 1:30am. Shit.

At the opposite end of the couch, Lexa lay fast asleep. Her head was tilted towards the tv, one arm tucked under it. The glow of the television screen erased the dark circles under her eyes, made her skin glow pale in the darkness. She looked peaceful, more relaxed than Clarke had seen her recently. Clarke debated leaving her there, but she didn’t know where Raven was and didn’t want Lexa to be woken up abruptly at an odd time. So that meant Clarke had to wake her up.

Clarke sat up slowly, pushing herself upright so that she could sit up, cross legged. Then she reached over and grabbed Lexa’s wrist, applying the tiniest amount of pressure.

“Lexa, hey.”

Lexa stirred slightly but didn’t wake up. Clarke grabbed her bicep then and shook it gently.

“Lexa, you need to move.”

At this, Lexa woke up, eyes heavy with fatigue and face immediately flooded with stress once again. Clarke almost regretted waking her up, making her face the world again.

“What time is it?” Lexa asked, her voice soft and cracking.

“1:30.”

“Shit. I should go.” Lexa swung her legs to the side, rubbing at her eyes in a way that seemed like she was annoyed at being tired, at having a human weakness.

Clarke reached out and grabbed her arm again. The skin was warm under her touch, the muscle tense.

“Lexa….just...you should stay here for the night.” Clarke’s eyes met Lexa’s in the half light. “Don’t waste time you should be sleeping by driving home. I’ll lend you a shirt or something in the morning.”

Lexa looked unsure for a moment.

“Plus, you know, the wine. It might be best to just make sure you sleep it off.”

That seemed to settle it. Lexa nodded her assent and they walked together to Clarke’s bedroom.

Clarke rummaged around in her drawers and pulled out a faded Los Angeles Dodgers t-shirt and cotton shorts.

“Here,” she said, handing them to Lexa, and Lexa, in her haste to go to sleep, started undressing immediately.

Clarke debated turning away, but that felt childish, somehow, especially considering their history. Yes, Clarke had seen Lexa naked before (had actually seen her naked _multiple_ times, had once had a dream in which Lexa had visited her as a queen of an army, wearing nothing but warpaint smeared fiercely around her eyes, but that was neither here nor there). Instead, she moved to change as well, facing slightly away from Lexa, trying not to watch.

Still, out of the corner of her eye, Clarke saw Lexa removing her clothes. She first unbuttoned her blouse, her hands fumbling tiredly at the buttons, then pulled it off her shoulders. Her skirt she unzipped expertly behind herself before dropping it to the ground. Clarke watched, not for any sort of sexual reason, but because watching Lexa take her work clothes off was a lot like watching a warrior remove her battle armor. With each inch of skin that was revealed under the immaculate white of her shirt and the dark navy of her skirt, Lexa seemed to relax further, until, standing in just her bra and underwear, she looked youthful and free again, as she had when she was asleep. This was the version of Lexa that Clarke liked the most.

Then, Lexa shrugged into Clarke’s clothes with a pleased sigh and Clarke ignored the drop in her stomach at the sight of Lexa wearing her oversized t-shirt.

In Clarke’s bathroom they brushed their teeth side by side, the tips of their elbows bumping and sliding against each other. Clarke’s eyes caught Lexa’s in the mirror and Clarke smiled, her face full of foam, and Lexa laughed at her. They climbed into bed together, limbs heavy, smelling of mint toothpaste and fresh laundry.

It had been a while since Clarke had had someone in her bed, even just platonically. She forgot how much she liked it, the comforting weight of another human beside her, the feeling of their body heat mingling under the covers. With Lexa, this felt especially nice, as pleasant as if they had been doing this for years...which, of course, they hadn’t been, but in that moment Clarke thought that this was a feeling she could get used to.

They lay next to each other, both facing outward on their sides of the bed, and Clarke was just beginning to drift off when she heard Lexa’s voice.

“What is that?”

Clarke’s eyes opened reluctantly, and she turned over and propped herself up on her elbow, peering through the darkness to see what Lexa was asking about.

“The painting?” Clarke asked, and Lexa nodded.

It was the painting Clarke had been working on when Lexa called, the one that now bore the unmistakeable blotch that Clarke would have to fix later.

The painting, which was almost finished, showed a figure in profile. It was a woman, a beautiful woman, a deadly woman. Her mouth was open in a battle cry and her face was wreathed by tousled hair that had been pulled back into many tiny braids. The eyes were emerald, surrounded by black kohl. The woman stood on a cliff, looking over a vast, green landscape. Behind her was draped a cloak of red, caught by the wind so that it spread out behind the woman, merging with a blood red sunset.

In truth, it was the version of Lexa that Clarke had seen in her dream. But she couldn’t say that. Not now at least, not when sleep was calling them. Besides, what would she even say? _I dreamed that you were a warrior queen and I felt like painting it._ It felt too odd, too strangely personal to say out loud.

So instead Clarke said, “I don’t know, just something I saw in a dream once.”

Lexa was silent for a moment, then she spoke, so quietly that it was barely audible. “It’s gorgeous.”

 _It’s gorgeous because it’s you_ Clarke thought, but what she said was “Thank you.”

They resumed their earlier positions then, facing away from each other, and in a few moments they were both fast asleep.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been going back and forth about whether to put the day of the week/year at the top of the chapter. I finally decided that I am going to do it, because it helps somewhat with the timeline, but the caveat is that I am not going to be historically accurate to any of the years (aside from technology and things like that). So you won't see any real life events of those years affect this world. 
> 
> Hope that makes sense, and thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Monday May 3, 1999 - 24 Years Old**

Professor Charles Pike was good at a number of things: teaching the convoluted subject of neuroscience, running long distances without pause, maintaining his sizeable backyard garden...and perhaps most curiously, spotting greatness in his students.

Every year they sat before him, those bright, young medical students. They had tired eyes and burning hearts and brains that continually surprised him. He taught them about sensory systems and motor systems, about the hippocampus and the hypothalamus, about how to research and diagnose patients with brain damage. His students were fairly diverse, but they all shared a hunger for knowledge, a desire to help people. They soaked up the information he gave them like sponges, and he was more than happy to provide a fresh deluge every day.

If anyone were to ask, Professor Charles Pike would say he loved his students. That was a truth.

If anyone were to ask, Professor Charles Pike would say he loved all of his students equally. That was a lie.

Because every few years, there would be one that would take him by surprise. This student would ask questions no one else was asking, or navigate difficult labs with an ease that took his breath away. Their brilliance radiated off of them, lighting the way to their futures, leading them down a path to greatness. Pike cherished these students, he made a point to challenge them more, push them harder, and his love for them buoyed them up, until, years later, he’d receive a letter in the mail notifying him that he was being listed in the dedication of their book, or a phone call telling him that they had invented a new way to perform a surgery. In those instances Pike would have a flashback to years before, an image of that student sitting in their seat, young and hungry, looking up at him as he taught. He had gotten to be a part of that greatness.

In all of his 17 years of teaching, Pike had had only a handful of this type of student. The last one had been four years ago.

But this year, the dry spell had ended. This year, he had Clarke Griffin.

Clarke Griffin, who was the daughter of Abby Griffin, a neurosurgeon known nationwide for her steady hands and innovative ideas and impeccable success rate. He had seen Abby speak at a conference two years ago and he remembered being completely captivated by her words, even going up to speak to her afterwards. He had found her intimidatingly brilliant.

Clarke Griffin, who seemed to have memorized the textbook and aced everything he threw at her.

Clarke Griffin, who, during a particularly difficult lab day, had finished with hours to spare and, upon noticing that one of her fellow classmates was struggling, had sat next to him well into the night, lending her sturdy persona, feeding him words of encouragement until he finally saw where he had gone wrong.

Clarke Griffin, who was standing before him now in his office, telling him she didn’t want to be great.

“I don’t think it’s for me, Professor,” Clarke said, defiance in her eyes. “I’m not happy. My heart isn’t in it.”

It was 10am on a Monday, the time when Pike held his office hours. Clarke had walked in only moments before, had inhaled once, sharply, before telling him she wanted to quit medical school.

Pike regarded her from where he was sitting behind his desk.

“Clarke. Please sit down.” He gestured at the chair across from him.

She hesitated for a moment before doing as he said.

“I’m assuming I don’t have to remind you of the importance of a decision like this?” He asked, and Clarke nodded.

“Very well.” He templed his hands in front of him, forearms perched on the the edge of the desk. “What is your reasoning, aside from unhappiness?”

There was no hesitation in her answer. “I don’t want to be a neurosurgeon.”

“Ok.” Pike stared her down, trying to see a flaw in her armor, but Clarke’s gaze was unwavering. “Then what _do_ you want to be?”

At this, Clarke broke for just a moment, her eyes flickering down to her lap quickly before meeting his again. Any other person might have missed it, but Charles Pike was not a man who missed details.

“I’m...I’m actually not sure. I like to paint. I’d like to think I could make a living as an artist, doing something I love.”

“Something you love. I see.” Pike leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “And you believe everyone in the world should have the luxury of following what they love? If that were true, we’d have a lot less lawyers and accountants. A lot less of everything, really, and a lot more of people doing absolutely nothing worthwhile.”

Clarke opened her mouth to speak, her blue eyes flashing dangerously, but Pike held up a hand to silence her.

“You know what I love, Clarke? Gardening.”

Clarke let out a harsh little laugh at this and Pike smiled, acknowledging the humor in the statement.

“It is true though, I love to garden. I have a plot in my backyard. Flowers and herbs and vegetables that I tend to almost daily. To me, the earth is a true gift, and people would do well to cultivate skills that allow them to reap what the earth gives us.” He leaned forward then. “So does the idea of quitting my job and gardening more often sound enticing? Of course. But I know that my time is better spent doing something I’m equally good at--teaching. Teaching serves the greater good, it helps people in a more tangible way than gardening would. And besides, gardening would be boring after a while. It doesn’t challenge me the way that my students do, every single day. Just the way that your patients would be a new challenge every day you worked as a surgeon.”

Clarke squirmed in her seat, unable to keep quiet for any longer. “So you’re saying that I should sacrifice my personal happiness for _the greater good_? That just because I could be good at helping others that means I shouldn’t try to help myself?”

“No, Clarke. I don’t doubt that you are a good artist. But you could be a _great_ surgeon. Why put the lesser before the greater? Become a surgeon, keep your art as a hobby, like me and my gardening. Don’t throw it all away.”

Pike paused for a moment for dramatic effect, then put the cherry on top of his argument. “Besides, what would your mother say?”

Clarke’s body tensed at these words, her hands gripping the arms of her chair very hard, making angry red blotches appear on the fair skin of her knuckles.

“Do _not_ bring my mother into this.”

“I have to bring your mother into this,” Pike said. “Have you even thought of what you would tell her?”

“I’ll tell her I need to do what makes me happiest. I’m her daughter. She’ll understand.” The words rang false in both of their ears.

“Will she really?” Pike asked as gently as possible, but this seemed to be the last straw for Clarke.

She got up abruptly, pushing her chair back forcefully. “I didn’t come here to be lectured, Professor, or even to get your advice. I came here to inform you of my decision, since I noticed you were taking a special interest in my progress. So this is me informing you. I quit.” She turned then, her hair a whirl of gold as she stormed through the doorway.

He listened to her footsteps as they echoed down the hall.

Pike’s emotions swirled. Anger, disappointment, guilt, they writhed under his skin, made him feel uncomfortable and suffocated. His hands itched to garden, his legs itched to run. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It never had before. His great students were supposed to embrace their greatness, not discard it with all the grace of a pair of used surgical gloves being thrown into the trash. He didn’t know what to do, where to go. All he saw was Clarke’s greatness bleeding out of her, his hands doing nothing to staunch the inexorable flow.

He got up and closed the door, then took a deep, calming breath, forcing Clarke Griffin to the back of his mind. There was nothing he could do. He had to get on with his day. He walked back over to his desk, flipped open a book, and began to read.

Later that day, Professor Charles Pike went on a run. He went his usual route, listening to his usual music, when suddenly a quote came to his mind, unbidden. It was a quote that had been on a framed poster in one of his own professor’s classrooms, when he was a student at medical school. “A good surgeon operates with his hand, not with his heart.” Written by some French writer that had no medical experience whatsoever, Pike had mostly forgotten about the quote, and yet here it was, interrupting the temporary calm that running had brought him.

But then he understood.

He thought back to Clarke Griffin, about their unfortunate conversation that morning, still so vivid in his mind, still so painful. Yet now, a strange peace settled in him with that memory.

Maybe his instincts had been wrong just this one time. Because as he thought about it, he realized that Clarke Griffin had too much heart to be a great surgeon. Clarke Griffin was, in fact, all heart. He had seen that for himself, numerous times in their classes together. Clarke Griffin’s heart would always win over her head, over her hand, and as a surgeon, that just was not allowed.

If he told himself this, he could come to terms with her decision.

He’d just have to tell himself over and over again until he actually believed it.

 

**\------**

 

The man squinted at her impeccably formatted resume, looking at it only briefly before setting it back down on the table in front of him. Then, he directed his squinting at her, his watery, pale blue eyes tracing over her face. This scrutiny seemed much more thorough than the one he had performed on the resume.

Lexa braced herself, expecting a question about her past experiences. Maybe a question about why she wanted to get into this particular area of politics.

Instead, he said, “So, you’re Senator Cooper’s daughter, huh?”

Something inside her hardened. “Step-daughter.” She’d be correcting people for the rest of her life.

“Big win last November.”

Lexa nodded, a small flicker of pride bursting in her chest before she could stop it. “Yes. Big win. I actually worked on his campaign as a--”

“So you want to get into the television realm now, eh?” He grinned at her slimily. “You’ve certainly got the looks for it.”

She gritted her teeth, wanting nothing more than to punch his out, but instead she smiled mildly, her lips pressed tightly together. “Thank you.”

“Why are you just going for this PA position though? I’m sure daddy could make a call, pull some strings. Get you up to coordinator level at least.”

“I prefer to do things on my own.”

“Gotcha. Well, we do happen to have an opening. And it’d be neat to have a Senator’s daughter on board.”

She hated this man already. “I believe my qualifications are more than enough as well.”

He shrugged. “Sure. That too. When would you like to start?”

“As soon as you’ll have me.”

“And you’re willing to move out to New York for this?

“Of course,” she said.

“It doesn’t pay very much you know. And the hours will be long.” He was just throwing things out now, testing her resolve.

“I’m well aware of that.” Her words were soft but steely.

He gave her that same slimy grin and shrugged his shoulders as if to say that this was his normal routine, when Lexa was positive that he wouldn’t have done the same thing with a male candidate. Then, he stuck out his hand, “Well then, you’ve got yourself a deal. I’ll call you with the details once it’s all settled.”

She looked down at the hand he’d offered, at the dry skin and the nails chewed short, and thought that she really didn’t want to touch this man. But he was looking at her expectantly. And she was a Senator’s stepdaughter who was accepting his job offer. So, she stuck out her own hand and grabbed his in the briefest of holds before dropping it again. “I look forward to it,” she said, the lie rolling easily off her tongue.

Then she glanced at her watch. 5:45pm. Time to head to the restaurant.

“I have to go,” she said, standing up from the chair and smoothing her skirt. His hand followed her movement, resting at where her skirt ended just above her knee, and once again she fought the urge to slap him. “I have a prior engagement. Thank you for your time.”

He stood up too, as she walked away, and then called after her, “I’ll call you soon.” He looked around, clearly hoping other patrons of the shop would think they had just been on a date.

The glass door of the coffee shop closed behind Lexa’s back, his words mercifully cut short.

Outside, she dug in her purse for her cigarettes and lit one up, the nicotine dulling the annoyance she felt building during that encounter. Afterwards, she stubbed it out and popped a mint in her mouth, then sprayed herself once, lightly, from a small perfume tube she kept in her purse. Clarke wouldn’t want to smell the cigarette.

In her car, she felt much more calm, and as she steered out of the parking lot she allowed herself to get excited at the prospect of what that meeting meant for her.

Since her stepfather’s triumphant win in November, Lexa had been working as a legislative assistant for a junior senator from North Carolina. The senator was young, handsome, and completely unprepared for the job. He came from a veritable political dynasty, a bible belt Republican family that seemed to specialize in spawning baby boys that grew up to be senators or representatives.

Lexa had hated every moment of it, had strongly disagreed with almost all of the senator’s conservative policies, and had gotten almost no credit for the amount of work she put in behind the scenes to make sure the junior senator at least looked like he knew what he was doing. She could have been holding the position herself, and been doing a much better job of it.

To make matters worse, the new job had forced her to move from Baltimore to Washington DC, meaning she was no longer close to Clarke, Anya, Raven, or anyone on her father’s political campaign who had begrudgingly become, if not friends, at least casual acquaintances that she could grab dinner or a drink with. In DC, she felt painfully isolated, lonely. She’d walk around at night, past all the bars filled with pompous, pampered men in suits, and feel like she was from a completely different world than these people.

But, supposedly, she was on the path that she was supposed to be on. People told her that she’d only have to deal with this for a few more years before she could start making her own moves, start making a difference politically.

The problem was that Lexa didn’t think she had a few years to spare. She wanted to be doing something _now_ , something that would allow her to leave a mark on the world, even at the ripe age of 24 _._ So, since the beginning of April, she had been scouring newspapers and the internet for any political jobs that were outside of DC. Something fresh, interesting. Something that would challenge her, allow her to grow. For weeks she had no luck, only seeing the same old jobs she always saw. But then, one late night, she was tucked in bed flipping through channels when she came across _The Cage Wallace Report_. The host was a relatively pleasant looking guy, slicked back black hair and a nice suit, and he was interviewing the Vice President.

Lexa knew about these types of shows, of course, though she had never watched them herself. But there was something about that night that made her pause in her remote flipping. She realized that this guy, Cage Wallace, was in the political realm, but not in the traditional way. She watched the whole show, became captivated by the easy banter between the host and the guest, the mix of actual politics with the usual talk show pleasantries. And somewhere along the way she started to imagine herself in the host’s chair. She could do that, she thought to herself. Television was different, it was refreshing, it was the challenge she had been looking for, and perhaps most importantly, it would get her out of DC and into the bustling streets of New York City.

The next morning, she’d called the show and had been put through to the man she spoke to at the coffee shop. He was the associate producer on the show, and he had seemed annoyed and disinterested until she had, reluctantly, told him who she was. With that bombshell dropped, his interest had suddenly skyrocketed, and he told her that he’d be in DC in two weeks and that they could meet up for coffee and speak about a possible opportunity then.

So they had met. And now she had a new job.

Lexa thought about all of this, and, as she hurtled along the highway, windows down, summer wind teasing the hair at the nape of her neck, she felt as though she was finally heading towards a future that was worthwhile.

She couldn’t wait to tell Clarke.

They were meeting at a restaurant halfway between Baltimore and DC, to make it easier for both of them, and Lexa realized that somehow it had been months since they’d seen each other, or even spoken. She resolved to not let that happen again.

After about 30 minutes of driving, she pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot. She looked at the clock on her dashboard. 6:15. Five minutes to spare. She pulled down the sun visor above her seat and examined herself in the tiny mirror that was embedded in it. A few tendrils of hair out of place in her bun, but otherwise she looked fine.

She got out of the car and walked towards the restaurant. The front of the restaurant held a huge glass window, and as Lexa approached it a flash of blonde hair caught her eye.  

There, sitting at a table, was Clarke. Lexa paused for a moment, just looking at her friend.

Clarke looked carelessly beautiful, as always. Her make-up was simple, and her hair fell in messy waves down past her shoulders. She was wearing a plain white v-neck shirt under an open leather jacket. The man sitting at the next table over kept shyly shooting her glances, but Clarke didn’t notice him.

Lexa could tell, even from this distance, that something was weighing on Clarke. She kept moving her hands, first tapping her fingers on the table, then fiddling with a rolled up napkin that sat in front of her. Lexa hoped that whatever was bothering her wasn’t too serious.

She walked past the window and pushed open the door.

“How can I help you?” A pretty young hostess smiled up at her.

“I’m meeting someone,” Lexa said, nodding in Clarke’s direction, and the hostess gestured for her to go ahead.

Lexa walked up to Clarke and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey you.”

Clarke jumped a little at the touch, then looked up and saw who it was. She immediately stood up and wrapped Lexa in a hug. “Hey back,” she said into Lexa’s neck, and Lexa’s chest felt that familiar and confusing tug that it always did when she saw Clarke after a while.

They sat down then, and Lexa ordered a scotch on the rocks while Clarke got one of their speciality cocktails.

“I still don’t know how you drink that stuff,” Clarke said, when the drinks arrived a few minutes later.

Lexa held her drink delicately in her hand and swirled it around a bit, the liquid and ice clinking against the glass. “It’s definitely an acquired taste,” she said, taking a sip. Clarke made a face.

Clarke’s drink was served in a martini glass, and it was a pleasant shade of light green, much different than the amber of Lexa’s Scotch.

They looked at their menus, which offered a wide selection of typical Italian fare, and then they placed their orders. After the waitress had come and gone, Lexa leaned back in her chair and regarded Clarke. She wanted so much to tell her all about her interview and the new job it promised, but Clarke’s worried face suddenly seemed like the top priority.

“So, is everything alright? You seem a little...distracted,” Lexa said.

Clarke once again reached out and started fiddling with her napkin, but Lexa placed a hand on top of it and Clarke’s hand stilled under her touch.

“Clarke, look at me.” Clarke looked up at her and bit her lip. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“Of course,” Clarke said. “But I think maybe I’ll save my news until later. It’s a doozy. Let’s just enjoy dinner. Tell me about your day.”

“Are you sure?” Lexa asked. “You don’t want to just get it over with? I’m all ears.”

Clarke squeezed her hand. “I’m sure.”

So with that, Lexa launched into her own news. She told Clarke about how unhappy she’d been as a legislative assistant, about how DC was so humid and cockroach infested that she constantly felt moist and dirty, about how her junior senator would be lost without her by his side. At some point, their food arrived, and they ate slowly as Lexa talked about how she had begun to look for other jobs, and had come to the realization that maybe traditional politics were not for her. Then she talked about watching _The Cage Wallace Report_ , about speaking to the producer first over the phone and then in person, and how she was now just waiting to hear when she would be able to start.

Clarke smiled and asked all the right questions and the pride shining out of her eyes made Lexa feel a warmth that was startling in its power. When Lexa reached the end, Clarke asked her where she would be if she ended up getting the job.

“New York City,” Lexa said, and Clarke, who had been lifting a forkful of pasta to her mouth, suddenly paused her hand in mid air.

“Maybe that’s where I should go too.” Clarke said, putting her fork down.

Off of Lexa’s curious glance, Clarke sighed and took a deep breath. “Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to say it...I’m quitting medical school.” She paused for a moment. “Actually, I’ve already quit medical school. I did it. This afternoon.”

There was silence as Lexa struggled to process this information. She knew Clarke had been just as unhappy in medical school as Lexa had been in DC. And yet, the possibility of Clarke actually quitting had never crossed Lexa’s mind. Clarke was too good in her studies, too good of a daughter to risk disappointing her parents. And yet, here she was.

Lexa tried to tread lightly, remembering the instances of tension between them in the past that had arisen out of their discussion of Clarke’s future.

“Wow,” Lexa said finally. “I never thought you would actually do it.”

Clarke regarded her plate intently. “Honestly, neither did I.”

“And I’m assuming you already know what this means. For you, and your relationship with you parents?”

Clarke nodded.

“Ok.” Lexa hesitated, not wanting to push Clarke too hard, but also needing to be sure that Clarke knew exactly what she was giving up. “I understand your decision. But...Clarke, you could be someone that your patients look up to, pour their hopes and dreams into. You really want to give that up?”

Clarke looked up at her. “I never asked for that.”

“You never asked to be extremely talented at medical...things. I get it. But the fact is that you _are_ , Clarke. You should use your gift. You’re driven to fix everything for everyone, we both know that. What will you do without anything to fix?”

Lexa braced herself, expecting fire from Clarke, but all she saw was a mixture of resignation and determination waging war on Clarke’s face.

“Did your parents ever tell you bedtime stories?” Clarke asked after a moment, and Lexa nodded. “Ok. My dad did too sometimes, when he was home. I loved them. But do you know what my mom would read me, when I was just a kid tucked into bed? She’d read me medical textbooks.” Clarke laughed mirthlessly. “Fucking medical textbooks. And then she’d quiz me in the morning, over my bowl of fruit loops.” Clarke pointed at a spot directly in the middle of her chest and adopted a voice that was light but clearly demanding. “What’s this Clarke? Your sternum.” Clarke moved her finger to her upper arm. “And what’s that? Your humerus bone. Very good Clarke.” Clarke reverted back to her normal voice. “When I was in junior high I spent my summers at science camp. When I was in high school I took all the AP classes I was allowed to take. I got a perfect score on every single biology test. I got into all the colleges I applied to, and then I got into all the medical schools I applied to.”

Clarke’s eyes were looking towards Lexa, but they seemed to be seeing right through her.

“People think I’m just naturally gifted at this stuff. That because my mother is a surgeon I was somehow predestined for it too. But that’s a lie, no one is just born that way. I worked my ass off.” Clarke’s eyes refocused on Lexa, steel in her gaze. “I didn’t have a _choice_.”

Lexa considered this. She pictured Clarke as a child, wide-eyed and innocent, pictured her getting older and losing that innocence, losing her will to fight against what everyone else told her was her destiny.

And if she really thought about it, she realized that what Clarke was doing was no different than what she was doing. They were both eschewing the courses that had been laid out for them in favor of something that inspired passion in them. The Lexa of three years ago would have been sharply critical of Clarke’s choice. But the Lexa of today completely understood.

“I support you,” Lexa said simply, and Clarke’s relief was written in her grateful smile. That was all Lexa needed to say, and all Clarke needed to hear. They were at peace with their decisions, and with each other.

Lexa looked at the plate of spaghetti in front of her, now stone cold and congealed looking. “So, do you want to get out of here?”

Clarke smiled and nodded.

Lexa laid down cash for the meal and they exited the restaurant. Outside, it was dusk, the night slowly closing in. They walked around for a while, just talking, enjoying each other’s company and filling in the rest of the gaps of their lives for the other person. Clarke told Lexa that Raven was killing it in school, as expected, and that she was already getting offers from big engineering firms, and even one from NASA. She told her how Bellamy was off on tour again, and how Octavia and Lincoln were still going strong. Then, when the conversation was just beginning to peter out, Lexa spotted an ice cream parlor across the street.

She turned to Clarke and raised an eyebrow, and Clarke laughed, grabbing her hand and tugging her across the street. They went inside and came out with large cones bearing several scoops of ice cream, then headed towards a park that was just down the street.

The park was small, quiet, and close to empty, lit by antique looking street lamps that cast shadows over the cobblestone pathway. It was dark now, and they could see the tiny flickers of fireflies as they dotted the air around them with their glowing morse code. The night was warm and the air smelled like freshly cut grass and ice cream and something about it made them feel like kids again. They joked as they walked around, giddy and full of life, their elbows brushing and their eyes darting towards each other.

Soon, they came across a bench and they sat down to finish their ice cream.

“So, New York?” Lexa said, after a large bite of her strawberry ice cream, and Clarke nodded. “New York,” she said breathlessly.

Just saying it out loud made the air buzz, as if the pulsing energy of New York City was already surrounding them.

“We’ll be in the same city again,” Clarke said. “I missed that.” She looked over at Lexa. “I missed _you._ ”

“I missed you more,” the words came out of Lexa’s mouth before she could stop them, before she could wrestle them back down like she normally did. This seemed to be something that only happened around Clarke.

Clarke looked sideways at her and opened her mouth to say something, but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, she broke through the strange seriousness of the moment by saying “We can go to Broadway shows!”

Lexa played along, grateful for the distraction. “Yes, and the Statue of Liberty.”

“Times Square.”

“Central Park.”

“The Empire State Building, MOMA, Grand Central, Chinatown!”

Lexa laughed at Clarke’s enthusiasm, but the truth is that she was just as excited as Clarke, just as caught up in the idea of being in a city that seemed so free of all the obligations of the cities they were currently living in.

“It’s going to be amazing,” Clarke said, voice barely above a whisper. “And we’ll get to experience it together.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both imagining their lives in New York. Something about the quiet darkness held them in thrall. At that very moment, in that very spot, their futures seemed amazingly, overwhelmingly bright. The possibilities endless. It felt like magic.

Lexa moved first, turning towards Clarke just as the other girl bent to lick her ice cream cone, the light pink of her tongue lapping against the cool white of the ice cream. Clarke caught her watching and turned to smile at her, the light of a streetlamp catching her hair and making it glow.

Lexa noticed a fleck of ice cream that had fallen just at the edge of Clarke’s lip, melting quickly against her skin.

“You’ve got something…” Lexa gestured at the general direction of the fleck on her own face, and Clarke lifted her hand to wipe it. She chose the wrong side.

Lexa reached out. “Here.” She wiped the ice cream off with the pad of her thumb, her finger catching the edge of Clarke’s bottom lip as she did so. “Got it,” she said, and she lifted her thumb to her mouth and quickly licked it clean.

When she looked up, Clarke was staring at her.

Even in the darkness, Lexa could see that Clarke’s pupils were wider than usual, her mouth parted slightly. The air around them seemed to still completely, the only sound that of a lone cricket chirping lazily somewhere behind their bench. Clarke’s gaze slowly moved from Lexa’s eyes to her lips, and Lexa felt that familiar tug once more, like a lasso around her heart.

Clarke leaned towards her.

Lexa did not move back.

They kissed. Clarke’s lips were soft and warm, her breath sweet with the taste of vanilla ice cream. When Clarke pulled away, Lexa could still taste it in her mouth.

They looked at each other for a long moment, hazy blue and lazy green, and Lexa felt a kind of hunger more powerful than the yearning she felt for the future.

Clarke leaned in again, and the hunger growled in Lexa’s chest, surprising her. Scaring her.

She stood up.

The air moved once more, the night encroaching on their bench.

The spell was broken.

“Let’s get you home,” Lexa said, her back to Clarke, but she turned and reached down to grab Clarke’s hand and tug her up so that she was standing.

Clarke looked up at her for a moment, an unreadable expression flickering on her face before being replaced by a neutral smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Ok,” she said, and they walked away.

In the darkness, the bench disappeared completely.

 

**\------**

 

That night, Lexa and Clarke both went back to Clarke’s apartment, because Clarke decided that she wanted to tell her parents about her decision. They stood in Clarke’s kitchen, side by side, backs pressed against the kitchen counter.

“Are you sure you want to do this right now?” Lexa asked, and Clarke nodded.

“It’s now or never,” Clarke said, then she lifted her phone off of the wall and dialed a number.

Lexa, ignoring the fear she still felt, reached out and tangled her fingers through Clarke’s hand and Clarke squeezed them, grateful for the contact, for the tangible warmth of Lexa’s support for her.

The phone rang once, then was picked up.

“Mom…” Clarke looked at Lexa and Lexa nodded. Clarke took a deep breath. “I quit medical school…”

Afterwards, after the tears and the angry words, after all that, they got into bed, not speaking through the routine of changing into pajamas and brushing their teeth.

They lay side by side on the bed, and Lexa once again reached down to grab Clarke’s hand where it rested between them.

“To new beginnings,” she whispered into the pitch black room.

They closed their eyes then, waiting for sleep, both trying not to worry about Clarke’s mother’s angry words or think about the kiss, but Clarke dreamt of threatening, sharp scalpels and a lonely park bench and Lexa dreamt of a stoic television audience and vanilla ice cream.


End file.
